


The Green Hills of Earth

by RhysLahey



Series: The Kuiper Cycle [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst, Because here Derek Hale is not broken, Beekeeping, Brett-Centric, Derek is actually a mature and functional adult with an acceptable moral compass, Eventual Fluff, Family Secrets, Future speech, Isaac Lahey Feels, Isaac-centric, M/M, OOC Derek Hale, Romance, Self-redeemed Jackson Whittemore, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Space Flight, Space Stations, Spies & Secret Agents, Warnings May Change, as in glacial build, classic scifi refs, colonization of space, everyone else should be IC, more tags to come eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 130,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26355982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhysLahey/pseuds/RhysLahey
Summary: Isaac Lahey has always dreamt about Earth, the almost-mythic Home Planet from where all humanity comes from. But Earth is very far away from Beacon H, the last permanent colony of the Solar System, at the very edge of the Kuiper Belt. Isaac likes his quiet life as the station's engineer, but everything gets very complicated when he decides to finally do something about his big crush on Scott McCall, the dashing captain of theMelissa. Enter Brett Talbott, the ship's new mechanic.
Relationships: Allison Argent/Scott McCall (background), Braeden/Derek Hale (background), Corey Bryant/Mason Hewitt (background), Isaac Lahey/Brett Talbot, Isaac Lahey/Scott McCall, Liam Dunbar/Hayden Romero, Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken, Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski (background)
Series: The Kuiper Cycle [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2093061
Comments: 98
Kudos: 32





	1. Prologue: Oberon

**Author's Note:**

> So, here we go again with a fic that already promises to be very long (please bear with me!). I decided to throw Isaac and Brett together in a space colonization setting which will be very heavily influenced by classic sf, but mostly Charles Chilton's _Journey into Space_ and Isaac Assimov's _Foundation_ series. I hope you like it, even if I have chosen a pair which may not be a one-man coracle, but it is a very small boat still. Maybe a canoe. But I think they go well together, even if they never interacted in the show!
> 
> The title comes from a song popular in science fiction, a version of which can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10689300), but there are many more verses (and many different tunes!).
> 
> [i_dont_want_to_tell_you_my_name](https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_dont_want_to_tell_you_my_name) has been proofreading and correcting everything (excepting this summary), so this should be readable, rest assured. And both of us have had insane amounts of fun geeking about space stations, low-gravity beekeeping, and tholins. I will never thank him enough for all the help.
> 
> Also, there is a GLOSSARY of future speech in the end note.
> 
> In sum, if you're up for a rarepair in a very long fic with a futuristic scifi setting, I hope you like this. And goes without saying, but comments and constructive criticism always welcome!
> 
> [This is a derivative story purely for entertainment purposes. I do not own Teen Wolf or its characters in any shape or form]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isaac is eleven when his childhood on Oberon, one of the main colonies of the Uranus Council, comes quickly to an unexpected end.

Isaac had always been fascinated by Earth, the green-blue marble that shone through his window, sailing across the sky far away, close to the Sun. Like most people in his generation (or, for that matter, in his parents’ generation), he had never been to the heavily guarded museum-preserve planet. Earth had for him and many others an almost-mythical status. Terra: the original home world.

At school he learnt that Earth was where we all come from, that our Solar System had been empty until we peopled it. Space travel was discovered some five-hundred years before Isaac was born, although back then his forefathers only dared go around their planet and their moon. It took them over a century to venture out and set up the first real colony on Mars and become real spacemen. By then, apparently, the mother planet had been rendered almost uninhabitable by pollution and overpopulation, and the pressure to colonise increased. The first hundred years or so of colonising Mars were a harsh period of trial and error, of how-to’s and what-not’s, but eventually a successful formula for colonising with minimal terraforming was achieved.

Mars became the Earth’s much needed escape valve, but it was not a long-term viable solution. Overcrowding on Earth increased, and Mars could only cope with so many newcomers at a time. Besides, the new Martian society that had emerged was already clearly different from those on Earth, and calls for independence grew. Political tension almost led to inter-planetary war, but conflict was successfully avoided. Terran colonies sprang all across the Solar System, liberating pressure from Earth, which was becoming increasingly strict on its population and resource management. The different colonies, just as it happened with Mars, developed their own cultures and policies, and because Earth could not do anything about it, the various foundations were only loosely under Earth’s political control. Mars and the dozen Venusian orbital stations were the most successful establishments, but three hundred years after the first space trip around Earth, the Human Federation had colonised most of the Solar System.

Of course, for Isaac all that was ancient history. The Human Federation collapsed one-hundred and seventy-five years before he was born, when the great hope for human survival, the colonial expedition to Alpha Centauri, failed catastrophically, getting lost in space and never heard from again . Now each planet formed its own independent Council, and they only begrudgingly collaborated with each other. The optimistic feel of the days of space exploration vanished. Humanity was confined to the Solar System, true, but it could be worse – it could still be suffocating on Earth.

At age eleven, however, Isaac was not as cynic or contemptuously apathetic as his fellow colonists. He was fixated on the epic stories of the early space travellers (Gagarin, Armstrong, Roberts, Webb, Anders, Argent), which meant that his life was focused on two obsessions: the home world and the outer frontier.

Every night Isaac dreamt of Earth. He was not sure about many things at that age, but he knew from a song that his mother sang to him, that the skies of Earth were fleecy, and its hills were green. One day he and his family would go back to the First Planet and would see the oceans, and the mountains, and the animals that roamed free, and the protected ruins of ages past. If he was lucky he might be able to see a wolf, a bear, or a real cow. And then, when he was older, he would become an explorer, charting the furthest corners of the Kuiper Belt and discovering new planetoids that could be exploited. Maybe one day he would travel to the Oort Cloud, the edge of the world, and discover the wreck of the Lost Colony. His brother Camden had bought him a telescope, so he was basically half-way there.

Life on Oberon, the furthest and second largest moon of Uranus, was good, he guessed. It was the only life Isaac knew, truth be told, but he liked it there. He liked their spacious family pod up in the orbital colony. He liked the views from the room he shared with his brother, which looked at the banded aquamarine planet and its frozen pink rings. He had been down to the surface on the orbital elevator once with a school excursion to the water mines his dad worked at. The parents of almost everyone in his class worked at the water mine (except for his friend Jackson’s dad, who was in the Colony Assembly). Isaac’s mum was one of the colony teachers, but neither Isaac nor his brother had been in her class.

Isaac had been on a spaceship too: when he went to Io in the Saturn Council to visit his grandparents who still lived there. His mum and dad used to live there too, and his brother had been born there, but they moved to Oberon when his father got his big fat job there, before Isaac was born. Isaac loved that trip, even if he thought the people from the Saturn colonies were weird. Uranus was unique and pretty, but Saturn was _so_ different! He had learnt to identify Saturn as a distant glowing dot in the sky close to the sun, but from Io it was huge, with its cloudy bands of orange and pink. Isaac also found it very bizarre that the planet rotated differently. He was used to Uranus, where the axis pointed towards the sun (which made sense), but on Saturn it pointed away into space (which was obviously stupid, even if his brother told him that was normal). And the _rings_! The rings around Uranus were pretty, but Saturn were so big and colourful. The song his mother sang to him definitely did not lie when it talked about Saturn’s rainbow rings. Other than meeting his grandparents, that trip convinced Isaac that one day he would travel to other colonies and all over the Solar System. Earth included, and who could tell where to after that.

**~ * ~**

The alarm went off, and Isaac jumped out of bed.

“ _Yes!_ Wake up, Cam!”

His brother, still wrapped in his bed covers, grunted something unintelligible before turning over and covering his face with his pillow. Isaac did not give up and went to the window and he clicked the shutters open, so the distant sunlight that reflected off Uranus filled the room with a greenish glow.

“Come on, lazy bones! You don’t know what the day is today?”

“It’s the day you shut up and let me sleep!” Camden threw a pillow at him before hiding under the sheets.

His brother was sixteen, and he thought he was a grown up already, which is why he sneaked out at night to go and see his friends and even came back once still drunk and with a hickey on his neck. Mum had not been very impressed. But Isaac knew he only did it to impress the other kids in his school.

“Nuh-uh,” Isaac jumped on his brother, landing all his weight on him.

“Oh my Earth, Zac,” Camden huffed as he pushed the sheets off his face and tried to wrestle his brother off of him. “Just let me _sleep_. I don’t care about the orbit!”

“Don’t be boring,” Isaac moaned. “You said you’d come with me!”

“It hasn’t got to be first thing in the morning. Nothing will be open yet!”

“You two!” their father’s voice came from the corridor. “I know you’re excited, but stop rambling in there!”

“It’s Zac!”

“No, I’m not!”

The door to their room slid open, and their mother walked in. “Zac, dear, it’s too early for you to be jumping around. Let your brother have some extra sleep. He’ll take you to the colony hub later.”

“ _Muuum!_ ” Camden groaned as Isaac jumped on the bed in a victory dance.

“No, Camden, you promised your brother” she warned. “Do this for me. And you,” she pointed at the excited and lanky pre-teen that would not stay still, “come and have breakfast with dad and me.”

“Mum! Mum! Listen, I’ve been practicing,” Isaac announced, still sitting on his brother’s bed. He coughed dramatically before he started singing with his biggest smile. “ _Across the seas of darkness, the good green Earth is bright. Oh, Star that was my homeland, shine down on me tonight_!”

“Well done, darling,” his mother clapped, even if his brother only managed a grunt and a huff.

“What comes next?”

“Mum, can I get some more sleep, please?” Cam begged.

“You’re a moody cow,” Isaac decided.

“He’s a hormonal teenager, Isaac, let him sleep. And don’t call your brother names.”

“I’m _not_ a cow or a hormonal teenager.”

“Of course you aren’t, darling,” their mother said with a grin, making Isaac chuckle. “Come on, Isaac. Let’s get breakfast and I’ll sing you some more of the song. And you, half hour. Then you’re taking your brother out.”

Cam sulked into his pillow. “This is _so_ unfair…”

**~ * ~**

Eighty-four Earth-years before, the Oberon Colony was established by [Commander Bobby Finstock](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28567200), the hero who had represented the Uranus colonies during the Solar Games held on Earth. A large statue of him with his many medals, holding a model of Uranus and its moon system stood on top of the axis of the orbital elevator that anchored the colony to the moon below. The new settlement was designed to be a water drilling station to supply the Uranus Council and all the ships heading to Neptune and the outer frontier, but it had also become the main telecommunication node for the Uranus Council.

The Central Colony Hall (locally known as the ‘colony hub’) was a large, multi-levelled, domed space. It was where the main shops were located, and where all the avenues that connected the residential and industrial sectors met. However, its most impressive characteristic was the Orbital Timepiece, a monument that consisted of three pairs of upright monoliths arranged in such a way that the Sun would shine through the aligned gaps when one orbit was completed. In the weeks leading to Foundation Day, the colony assembly had decorated the hub and the monuments, and arranged all sorts of stalls, stands, and rides. Isaac wanted to see all.

“Half of them are not even finished yet, Zac,” his brother moaned as Isaac ran through the throngs of people that were arriving from Titania, Umbriel and the orbital stations around the planet.

“That’s going to be for candy floss,” Isaac listed, ignoring his brother. “That’s popcorn. _Whoa_! They have Jovian treats! Oh Cam, those are mum’s favourites.”

“Don’t go running away!” Cam shouted. This time, his little brother listened and did not disappear into the crowd.

The Lahey brothers walked around the hub and they even sat at the end of the Timepiece, looking at the aligned monoliths and how the sun almost-but-not-quite shone straight through the gap. Cam explained Isaac again how it all worked, and what the orbit was, and what an Earth year was. Isaac knew it all already, because he was going to be a spaceman one day, but he liked it when his brother took some time to explain things to him, as he did when they were both little.

“Hey, Isaac!” a voice called from behind them.

“Jackson!”

Jackson was Isaac’s best friend, and he used to be the Laheys’ neighbour, but a few months ago his dad was elected to the Colony Assembly. The Whittemores then moved to the admin sector, and now the two children only coincided at school.

“Hello, Camden,” the other boy said politely.

“Hello, Jackson. How’s your new sector?”

“It’s lighter and neater,” Jackson shrugged his shoulders. “It’s okay, I guess.”

“You don’t sound very happy about it,” the older Lahey noted.

“There are very few kids over there. I prefer it back in our sector,” Jackson admitted, kicking something on the floor, avoiding eye contact.

“That’s okay, I’m here now,” Isaac beamed at his friend.

“Hey, Isaac, shall we go up to the D gallery to look at the hub from above?”

Isaac gasped in anticipation and opened his eyes wide. The D gallery was the topmost corridor. Going there was always exciting, because that was where the game stores were. But that day it also offered a perfect viewing point.

“Cam?” Isaac begged, pulling his best puppy dog eyes, and hugging his big brother.

Camden frowned. He had promised their mum he would keep an eye on his brother, but he was going to be with Jackson. Jackson was a good boy he could trust. And they were going to be up in the D gallery. All the shops were going to be closed. Also, he had seen a few of his friends hanging around the snack shack, and he really wanted to chat with Laura.

“Is your buzzer on?” Cam arched an eyebrow.

“Yup!” Isaac showed his orange and green Jupiter Junior Explorer wrist-comm.

“Fine… but you ring me if anything happens. And don’t you tell dad.”

“Okay!” Isaac grinned. “Can I have some chips to buy Martian fritters?”

“Cheeky much?” Camden ruffled his brother’s curly hair, but he handed over a couple of chips and then each walked in a different direction.

Once they bought a bag of sugary deep-fried Martian squash, Jackson led Isaac to the far edge of the hub and slid the door to one of the hardly-used staircases that led all the way up to the galleries. Both kids raced until they reached the top and walked out to the gallery. They looked down, and saw the hub boiling ay activity. Stalls and stands were slowly opening, more people were arriving every minute, and the colony loudspeakers were already blasting music. Isaac found his brother down below, and he sent him a quick message, telling him to look up. A few seconds later, Camden turned around and looked up. Isaac and Jackson waved, and Camden smiled and waved back.

“What are you two doing here?”

_Oh, great_ , Isaac thought. _Matt Daehler_.

“Hey, Matt,” Jackson said for both of them. To say that Matt was not Isaac’s best friend was an understatement.

“Have you been down there?” Matt asked as he sat next to Isaac and looked down at the floor, four levels below.

“We have,” Isaac nodded. “Do you want a fritter?” he offered. Matt shoved his hand into the greasy bag and pulled a sugary fritter.

“Do you know when it all starts?” Matt spoke as he chewed.

“I think it’s all starting just at lightdown.” Because of the way Uranus and its moons orbited around the sun, the colony had an artificial darkening system to simulate the 24h light/dark cycle that matched Earth’s circadian rhythms.

“I saw a ship coming from An Station,” Matt added. An was the seat of the Uranus Council. “I think the Prime Alderwoman was there.” The two other boys gasped.

“How would you know, Daehler?” Jackson did not believe that.

“My dad told me she’s coming ‘cause he’s going to be up in the front sitting with her,” Matt showed off.

“You’re lying,” Isaac called Matt out. “Your dad’s a miner. He won’t be sitting with the Alderwoman.”

“Oh, he will! My dad is in charge of the mine, you know?”

“No, he ain’t,” Isaac rolled his eyes. “ _My_ dad is the Chief Hydro. He knows where the water is, which is why we have a mine!”

“No, he doesn’t!” Matt stood up and pushed Isaac off the bench. The fritters flew all over the floor.

“Stop it!” Jackson said, helping Isaac up on his feet.

“No! He’s a liar,” Matt insisted.

“I am _not_ a liar!” Isaac growled. Isaac might have been many things, but a liar was not one of them, and being called one made him angry.

“Yes, you are. And your dad does shit in the mine.”

And then Isaac pushed Jackson to a side and threw himself at Matt with an angry grunt, throwing them both to the floor. Jackson tried to pull them apart, but they were a tangled mass of lanky arms grabbing at each other’s shirts, rolling over on the floor, and groaning. Eventually Matt managed to get the upper hand. He had Isaac just below him, with enough space to swing his arm, and he _punched_. Jackson managed to grab Matt’s collar and got him off Isaac.

“Back _off_ , Daehler! Isaac, are you okay?”

Matt slowly stood up and ran away. Isaac sat up, but there was a trickle of blood coming down from his nose and staining his green top. He also had a darkening circle around his left eye, and he was struggling to hold back a sob.

“I’m not a liar,” Isaac insisted, trying to convince himself that he had done the right thing.

“I know you aren’t.”

**~ * ~**

“You should have known better, Zac,” Camden said as he tried to clean Isaac’s face with a wet wipe. “What are mum and dad going to say?”

Isaac did not reply. He was already upset enough that his brother was angry at him – he did not need reminding that his parents still did not know.

“I’m sorry.”

“What were you even thinking?” his brother was annoyed both because he had to rescue his brother from a fight and because he had been so close to making out with Laura.

“Matt is an idiot,” Jackson, who was sitting next to Isaac, explained. Isaac nodded and looked at Camden, as if he had forgotten what being eleven was like.

“And throwing punches doesn’t make you an idiot?” Cam said with his irritating older brother tone.

“Your big sister is really nice,” Jackson stage whispered.

Isaac, who had come up with their secret code in which every third word you used the opposite of what you wanted to say, giggled.

“Har, har, very funny, you and your secret codes,” Cam rolled his eyes. “You will need to think of something better, because that one is crap.”

Jackson and Isaac looked at each other in surprise, shocked that Isaac’s annoying teenage brother had cracked their secret communication system.

“There you are!” a familiar voice roared in the distance.

Isaac and Camden instinctively stood up, looking serious, and Jackson did the same after a few seconds. Making a beeline for the two brothers by the bench came their father, who did not hesitate to push aside any of the many passers-by that crowded the colony hub.

“You’ve been fighting, Isaac?”

“Yes, dad,” Isaac mumbled as he looked down.

“Look up when I’m talking to you, boy. And you,” Mr Lahey now pointed at his eldest son. “You had the responsibility to look after your brother. What is your mother going to say?”

“I’m sorry, dad.”

“You better be… You’re David’s son, aren’t you?” he asked, looking at Jackson.

“Yes, Mr Lahey.”

“Did you get him in the fight?”

“No, sir,” Jackson replied in alarm.

“He pulled me away, dad!” Isaac defended his friend, and once he began, he could not stop talking. “He sent Matt away, because Matt said that his dad was the boss of the mine, and I told him he was lying, because you are the Chief Hydro, and without water or Hydros there would be no mine, and without mine we would not be here, and then- and then- he called me a _liar_ and he pushed me, and he—”

“Okay, enough,” Mr Lahey said, stopping his youngest’s long explanation before he started crying. “My job is nobody’s business, you hear me? It is what I do, and nobody else needs to know.”

“But _dad_!”

“No, Isaac. Jobs are for adults, and kids should not be discussing things they don’t understand.” Isaac had heard that before, that his dad worked in the mine so they would not have to become miners, and that they would all one day do something bigger and more important. But Isaac did not understand why the fuss… especially when Matt Daehler went around telling lies about his dad. “You better go and find your mother and explain what you have done, you hear me?”

“Yes, dad,” Isaac mumbled again.

“And you? You’ve let me down. You had very clear instructions,” Mr Lahey now told Camden. “How do you expect to become someone if you cannot look after your brother!”

“Dad, he was just up there—”

“He had to be with you, Camden. Not _up there_ ,” their father sighed in exasperation as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can understand your little brother being irresponsible like that, because he’s eleven and he’s got his head in the clouds, but you are sixteen. You should know better. You are the one who will have to take care of this family. Take your brother to your mother” Mr Lahey added with a disgusted wave of his hand. “Nobody is going out to the celebrations until we all go together, you understand?”

“Yes, dad,” Cam grunted as he furrowed his brow, suppressing a moan about how unfair it all was.

Mr Lahey sighed and patted his son’s shoulder before sending him with his brother back home.

“Good. Okay, Whittemore,” Mr Lahey said once Camden and Isaac were out of the hub, “do you know where your parents are now?”

“No, but I can buzz them, sir.”

“Good, you do that, son,” Mr Lahey said as he sat on the bench. “I’ll wait with you until they come, okay?”

“Yeah…” Jackson said as he clicked on the screen of his wrist buzzer and called his mother.

“Don’t worry too much about Isaac,” Mr Lahey said as he typed something on his own buzzer. “We’ll be coming later and you can see him then.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And who was the other kid? The one that pushed Isaac?”

“Matt?”

“Yes. What’s his surname?”

“Daehler, sir.”

“I’ll have a word with his dad…”

**~ * ~**

Later that day, the Laheys went all together to enjoy the celebrations. Both boys had been seriously reprimanded by their mother, and despite Isaac’s purple circle around his eye, everything appeared to be forgotten by the time they reached the colony hub. Mister Lahey bought a bag of Jovian treats for his wife and gave his kids a few credit chips so they could buy some savoury Neptunian crackers, although under very precise instructions to not wandering away.

Isaac and Camden stood with their parents as they waved and greeted all their friends, most of which were newly arrived miners without kids or family, so the two boys soon got bored of being asked how old they were and if they wanted to become miners like their dad. Mr Lahey then would put his arm around his eldest son, and answer for him, saying that he was going to be something bigger than a miner. Of course, every time he did this, Mr Lahey clearly ignored his youngest, who with his dreams of becoming an explorer and his telescope and his stories clearly would never be the man his father wanted him to be.

“Don’t worry, Zac,” his mother whispered when her husband was loudly laughing with one of his colleagues about something that was not remotely that funny, “Your dad loves you too, but Cam is getting to that age when he has to decide what he will be when he’s older, and your dad just wants him to do something other than drilling in an ice mine.”

“But I know what I am going to be, mum,” Isaac said, looking at his Jovian treat without any appetite. “I am going to be an explorer!”

“You are going to be the bravest spaceman of them all,” she reassured him as she took a cheeky bite of her son’s sweet.

“Mum! That’s my treat!”

“Sharing is caring,” she said with a smile and a sing-song voice.

“That’s so unfair…”

“Excuse you! You’re too young to sound like a moody teenager,” Isaac’s mother retorted, making him laugh.

“Darling,” Mr Lahey said once his friend had left. “I should have a quick chat with the Alderman for Titania. Do you mind waiting here with the kids?”

“We’ll wait up on the viewing platform,” she pointed to the upper gallery. Her husband nodded, gave her a kiss, and walked away through the crowd.

The hub was jampacked with people, visiting the food stalls and the game stands. There was a band playing old classics in a corner, and there was a camera crew to film the celebrations and the ephemeris. There was also a number of soldiers keeping the central avenue where the setting sun would align with the monoliths clear. As his mother took them upstairs to the viewing platform, Isaac texted Jackson to tell him where they were going, and his friend quickly replied saying that he would see him there.

Once on the upper level, Isaac ran to the edge of the platform, where Jackson was already waiting for him with his mother.

“Hello, Isaac,” Jackson’s mother smiled.

“Hello, Mrs Whittemore. Hello, Jackson.”

“How’s your eye,” Jackson asked as he put his hand forward, but Isaac brushed him away before his friend could touch his bruise.

“I’m fine.”

“Oi, grumpy pants,” Camden teased when he and his mother reached the edge of the platform, only to be slapped on the shoulder by his mother.

“Do not talk to your brother like that.”

“But _mum_!”

“Teenagers,” Mrs Lahey said to Mrs Whittemore, ignoring her older son’s moaning.

“I know…” Jackson’s mother, who also worked in the colony’s school, agreed. “At least you don’t have to deal with forty of them on a daily basis.”

“Believe me, I have enough with the one.”

“Mum, I’m, like, _literally_ here with you,” Camden moaned, making Isaac and Jackson giggle.

The two mothers stayed there chatting and catching up on the latest school news as they leant on the veranda, while their kids sat down on the floor with their legs dangling down over the edge and entertained themselves with whatever game they came up with (although Camden did little other than looking bored and typing into his buzzer, and looking over the barrier to see where his friends were). As time passed and the station inched closer to the alignment, the viewing platform filled up with people who wanted to see the alignment, until it was so crowded that it was almost impossible to walk through. Mrs Lahey began to wonder about where her husband was when the Prime Alderwoman of the Incorporated Council of Uranus, Julia Baccari, walked to the platform that had been set up for the occasion.

While the Alderwoman and other politicians delivered their speeches about the anniversary of Oberon, the virtues of space travel, the glorious days of the Home World, and the innate bravery and determination of the Uranians, more and more people crowded around the monument, until they blocked Isaac’s view of the monoliths.

“Cam, I can’t see from here,” Isaac said. “Can you put me on your shoulders?”

“You’re too heavy for that,” his brother told him. “And what about your friend?”

“ _Mum_!”

“What is wrong with you two today?” Mrs Lahey sighed.

“Zac can’t see.”

“Can we go upstairs with Cam?”

“You want to go to the D gallery again? After what happened this morning?”

“Pleaaaaase, mummy!” Isaac insisted. “I want to see the _alignment_! What kind of spaceman am I going to be if I miss it!” he begged. The alignment with the first orbit had been the most important thing in Isaac’s life for the last four months.

“A very annoying one,” Cam chuckled, only to be fulminated with a glare of his mother.

“Let them go, Rose,” Mrs Whittemore said. “They won’t get into trouble again today, will you boys?”

“No,” Jackson and Isaac sang in unison.

“Fine, but you go with Cam, you hear me?” Isaac and Jackson high-fived. “And you, young man, you better take care of your little brother.”

“But, Mum, my friends will be there!” Cam pouted.

“Camden, you’re your brother’s hero, and he wants to be with you,” Mrs Lahey told him. “You’ll miss this in a couple of years. So be nice to him, please. Especially today. Not just because of this morning, but because he really likes his astronomy stuff.”

Cam looked to his brother who was excitedly talking with Jackson about something or other, and he sighed.

“ _Fine_ … Come on, you two asteroids,” he said as he turned around and shoved his hands in his varsity jacket’s pocket.

“Love you, boys!” their mother said as the three kids made their way through the crowd to the stairs.

“Some peace at last,” Mrs Whittemore joked.

Isaac and Jackson ran up the stairs, stomping loudly on the steps and giggling in excitement while Cam climbed up two steps at a time to keep up with the hyperactive pre-teens. The D Gallery was not empty now, as many other people had decided to go up there to get a better view of the alignment. Amongst those people were Camden’s high school friends, whom he waved at, but then reluctantly ignored to make sure his little brother was out of trouble.

By the time the three kids got to the balustrade, the speeches had finished, and Prime Alderwoman Baccari was uncovering a plaque that had been fixed against the monoliths. Jackson asked about it, and Cam vaguely answered that it was something about the anniversary and the sacrifices of the Uranians. Jackson and Isaac wooed in excitement when the colony began to hush and shush and go quiet.

“Cam! _Cam!_ ” Isaac pulled his brother’s sleeve. “Stop it with your buzzer! Look!”

“What do you—”

“Look!”

In front of them, far below, the Oberon colony and all the visitors of the Uranus Council watched in awe as a beam of sunshine slowly but inexorably inched its way across the monoliths until it shone right through the space in between. There was a collective gasp when the ray of sunlight illuminated the gap between the polished stones, and Isaac could see the distant and bright disc of the sun fit _precisely_ in between the black stones. For Isaac that moment lasted an eternity, even if it must only have been a few seconds. Isaac could not keep his eyes from the perfect alignment. And then, in a blink of an eye, the sun slowly shifted, and the spell broke.

The colony erupted in cheers and applause. Bottles of bubbly wine were sprayed, and strangers hugged each other. Then, above the noise and the ruckus, a group of old people (the couple of survivors of Commander Finstock’s settlement and the handful of second-generation colonists) who were sitting in the first row down below, began to sing.

“ _From the bright harsh soils of Luna, to Saturn’s rainbow rings, in the hearts of lonely spacemen, is a longing voice that sings_ …”

Isaac was overly excited when he heard the song he was learning from his mum, and he joined in the old time tune at the top of his voice, and so did many other people in the hub.

That is, until there was a loud snapping noise and a creak.

**~ * ~**

Isaac was not sure of what he had seen. He heard the very loud noise of a bolt breaking, the snapping of a tension cable, and then everything happened in a blur. People screamed, metal bent, there was a loud gasp.

Isaac remembers his brother grabbing his wrist and pulling him in a hurry. He cannot remember his brother’s terrified face. He remembers Jackson running behind him, though, and the panicked people who rushed down from the D Gallery down to the viewing platform. He remembers crying but not knowing why.

Isaac remembers people actually running away from the viewing area as the colony constables tried to evacuate the damaged platform. He remembers his brother angrily shouting that their mum was there and that they needed to find her. He remembers how, even while holding his wrist, Camden tried to punch one of the constables in order to go to the platform.

Isaac does not remember Jackson’s mother being walked out of the viewing platform by a constable, or Jackson running towards her, leaving him and Cam alone with the policewoman who tried to calm his brother down. He does not remember either how Mr Harris, one of his dad’s work colleagues, came looking for them with a sullen face, only to walk them down to the main ground of the hub.

But Isaac will never forget seeing his father kneeling on the ground under the edge of the broken viewing platform, crying like he had never seen him crying, with someone in his lap. He will never be able to forget the unexpected and scary glare of despair and hatred that his father gave him and his brother. And even to this day, Isaac can hear his father hissing at them.

“You… you did this. You were not with her. _You_ did THIS!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is interested in knowing moore about the True Story of Bobby Finstock, I wrote a short fic about it: [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28567200).
> 
> And I also made some crappy art which I hope illustrates the alignment better!


	2. The transit of Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Isaac, you always wanted to be a spaceman, well now is your effing chance,” Isaac looked down at Jackson when he spoke, and was surprised to see in his face a mixture of fear and determination. “I cannot let you stay here. And if I ever get to do one thing right, I hope to do it for you, you hear me?”
> 
> Or: After his mother's death, Isaac's life takes a turn for the worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter goes back and forth in time, alternating Isaac's "present" on Beacon H with his past on Oberon. I hope it is clear enough in the story.
> 
> Also, TW: as this chapter deals with Isaac's relationship with his father, so there is mention of abuse.

Ultima Thule was a double-planetoid system in the furthest outskirts of the Kuiper Belt, forty-something Astronomical Units away from the Sun. Around it had grown a large orbital station that was the home of several thousand families that lived off mining asteroids for tholins consumed by the greedy industrial Inner Sectors. The inner reaches of the Kuiper Belt were part of the Incorporated Council of Pluto and Charon, but Pluto’s orbit was ten AU away: for the people of Ultima Thule, Pluto might as well be around Earth. In fact, for most of its orbit, Pluto was _further away_ than the Home World. Perhaps because of this Ultima Thule and the rest of the settlements of the further Kuiper Belt were not part of the council system; they were not part of the strict order of the incorporated colonies. The stations and settlements of Ultima Thule formed the ultimate frontier.

Within this broad and badly-defined outlying territory, Beacon H was a peripheral station further beyond Ultima Thule. Anchored to a large, nameless planetoid, it was not the furthest station from the sun, but it was the last proper settlement of the Solar System. Beacon H was located at the very edge of the Kuiper Belt: beyond it there were only minor mining stations and a few research ships that regularly flew out into the space between the Belt and the Oort Cloud. The old men liked to mention tales of odd radio signals that came from deeper space when they first established their colonies, but they also talked about unmarked ships that came from beyond the Oort edge, but all these stories about space pirates and lost colonists were mostly aimed at scaring little children. They definitely did not bother Isaac.

Isaac had been living there for almost ten years. Now he was a qualified Engineer (1st Class) of the Kuiper Corps of Engineers. That meant that he technically counted as a member of the Ultima Thule Frontier Rangers, but almost everyone in the far reach got a job through the lax militia. In reality he was the chief engineer of Beacon H, supervising the maintenance of the station, the tholin mining operation (although he had delegated all his mining operations to Greenberg), and repairing the ships that docked at Beacon H. Considering the poor state of repair of most of the station and the ships (not only in the Belt, but in the Solar System in general), he hardly had a break.

This day, however, Isaac had enough spare time to enjoy his secret pastime. He picked up his tattered notebook and the big case that sat under his bed, he gave a long smiling glance at a picture of him with his mother and brother, and left his spacious cabin, sliding the door shut behind him. Isaac walked along the rectangular corridors of Beacon H, carrying all his stuff and waving when he saw someone he knew, which was often. When he got to the ‘village pump’, which was the main intersection where all the residential corridors of Block A met, he saw Erica, the chief planetologist and his best friend.

“You’re not going up there again, are you?” she pointed at Isaac’s hardy case.

“Maybe?” Isaac cocked his head and grinned.

“That is so charmingly adorable, Isaac, but you’re not twelve anymore.”

“Always _so_ supportive,” he smirked back at the blonde woman.

“You’ll never get a boyfriend if you continue like that,” she joked, but Isaac only rolled his eyes.

“You know I’m already taken.”

“Yeah, well… When you grow the balls to actually tell him so he knows that _he_ is also taken, please let me know.”

Isaac chuckled at that and looked away to hide his blushing cheeks. He hated it when Erica was right. Erica smiled at him and patted his chest gently before letting him go on his merry way without mentioning his big crush.

From the ‘pump’, Isaac went to the elevator junction that connected Block A with the <1G core of the station, where he took a second elevator all the way to a much-ignored lift that took him to the Sun observation bay.

**~ * ~**

During the first couple of years after the accident at Oberon’s first orbit’s celebrations, Isaac not only had to learn how to live without his mother, but also with a depressed father. The former meant that he had to learn (and learn quickly) how to do more things on his own, and how to take care of him and his brother – especially because the latter meant that his father would have booze-fuelled mood swings from the phlegmatic to the melancholic. His father focused all his sober and lucid efforts on his work, which seemed to be his only escape valve of normalcy. To Isaac’s painful dismay, his father also seemed to have concentrated all of his parental devotion on Camden.

But at least Camden was still with him during that period. The two together kept up the appearances of a normal family, especially after their father clearly gave up on the idea. They were there for each other, making sure they were okay, and even if they did not talk about what exactly had happened, Isaac was happy just for Cam to be _there_.

Isaac never knew why, but his father and his brother began to argue. It was not overnight or over something particular; it was more subtle, and it was a gradual process. For Isaac, who was missing various pieces of that puzzle, it all became evident when Cam refused to help their dad at work. Their father wanted Camden to help with things in the mine, and he wanted his son to look at some old books and pamphlets their dad kept in his study. His brother obliged at first, but after a while he clearly refused to listen to whatever their dad had to say. Things got nasty after that, and culminated various months later with a massive row, a flying punch, and his brother leaving their family pod, slamming the door on the way out. His father also left, but when he came back home later that night, he was completely drunk. He started banging on Isaac’s door, yelling things about how he had fucked everything, how he was a waste of space who had let his mother die and forced his brother away from them.

Camden came back home after two days, but he refused to exchange any words with their father. He simply came in to sleep, and walked out in the morning to take Isaac to school and make sure he had something for lunch. When their father confronted Cam after a week of silent treatment, Isaac’s brother did not hold back. He called him out on his drinking, his lying, and his stupid plans for him, and how he had never deserved their mother. A few minutes later, Isaac found himself calling Jackson for help, because his father had beaten Camden to a bloody mess.

His brother refused to go back home after that. One day after school, he came to find Isaac before he got home. Camden was still covered in bruises and bandages, and Isaac could not stand his brother in pain like that, so he jumped into his arms and gave him a hug, crying on his shoulder, wishing everything were different. Camden hugged Isaac back, and fought back his own tears as he explained that he wanted him to run away with him. The eldest Lahey kid had plans to enlist in the merchant navy, to travel around the Solar System (like Isaac had wanted to do), and to leave their father behind. But Isaac was scared. He was scared because he did not understand what was happening, and Camden refused to explain what his father had tried to talk him into. Isaac was scared because being in the merchant navy was not the life of the space explorer he had dreamt of. He was scared because he did not want their father to be angry at him despite everything, and he was scared because he was only _thirteen_ , and he was not ready to leave his home – not even with his brother.

The morning after that, Camden found Isaac before he got to school and told him that he was leaving but that he would come back for him once he had enough money, that he would not let him live with their dad anymore, and that they would go to Earth together. He kissed Isaac as they both cried before Cam ran to the docking sector. That was the last time Isaac ever saw his brother.

**~ * ~**

The observation bays were two large domed structures, one looking into the solar system (Sun OB) and one looking away (Oort OB). These rooms were taken from the weird ideas of the early days of the space age, but they allowed the inhabitants of Beacon H to admire the solar system and the rest of the galaxy in all their distant glory. Because they were at either end of the rotating axis of the station, the bays were two of the few low-gravity areas of the colony. Perhaps because of that they were hardly ever visited: all residents had been there at least once, but looking at stars in low gravity lost its charm after a while. Because of all of this, the Sun OB was perfect for Isaac’s purposes.

When the lift doors opened with a ding, Isaac was not surprised to see that the domed room was all empty. Isaac jumped into the low-gravity area and positioned himself at the centre of the room. There he opened his case, from which he pulled out with all his care the telescope his brother had bought him back on Oberon so many years before. Why his family had got an eleven-year-old a nearly-professional telescope he never knew (and he never had the chance to ask), but he was ever so grateful. Without being fully conscious, Isaac began to hum and mumble the song that his mother had taught him.

_Hmmm mmm hmmmm… Oh, Star that was my homeland, shine down on me tonight … hmmm hmmm hmmm … And the lights below us fade; out ride the sons of Terra!_

In a few minutes the telescope was set and anchored to the floor. Isaac ordered the station’s AI to counter the floor rotation to keep his telescope still, and then to dim the lights, which the computer did with a beep.

Surrounded by the red glow of the dark lights, Isaac looked at the Sun, so far away, around which all the other planets were orbiting. He turned the wheels of the telescope until it was pointing to Earth and then pulled his note book and his pencil. He was meant to check his calculations for the transit of Earth, but he stopped when he read the inscription on the worn first page of the notebook.

_To Isaac: One day you’ll be a spaceman, but you need to learn your way around the stars first. Hopefully this will help. Happy Birthday! Mum and Cam xoxo_

**~ * ~**

Isaac’s father had slapped him before that night. Not when his mum was still alive, though, but he had. Isaac understood it, of course, because he had done things, and he had been wrong, right? And he was his father, so he knew what was best for him, and he loved him. Isaac needed to be punished. But until Camden left for good, Isaac had never really been beaten up like that. Whatever Cam and his dad had been discussing did not matter anymore because, without Cam, Mr Lahey broke. He reached his point of no return, and it was all his youngest son’s fault. Isaac, the pathetic little boy who had spent too much time with his mother and who had softened his brother and pushed him away from the family. Isaac, with his fucking telescope; the kid who wanted to be a spaceman in that lost corner of the Solar System. Isaac, the kid who deserved to have the crap beaten out of him.

For a while, Jackson was still there for him, even if they never talked specifics. Jackson was having some trouble with his parents as well, although he never said what. Even if his friend had moved to a different sector of the colony, Isaac still tried to keep in contact. They developed a more complex code than the one they had used when they were little to exchange their messages; not because they needed it, simply because it reminded both of them of long-gone happier times. It was a simple cypher, but it was complex enough for them to have to focus on it in order to read whatever they talked about. But as time passed by, Jackson eventually stopped replying. Perhaps his dad was right, that not even his friends wanted to be with him.

Isaac was masochistic enough to think about those days every now and then, simply to remember his brother even if it hurt; but it was the years after Camden left that filled his nightmares despite all his efforts to put them away.

Three years after Camden left, Isaac tried his best to spend as much time as he could in school. At school at least he could be alone with his thoughts. Alone full stop, because Isaac at that point had no friends. Partly because he pushed them away when they asked the odd question about his recurrent black eyes or his aches. Partly because after Jackson found out that he was adopted, he changed and he became an arrogant, self-sufficient prick, and Isaac reached the conclusion that if even his best friend shunned him, maybe he did not deserve to have any. Despite all of this, in school he could read and keep on dreaming about going out in space. When he was not at school, his father made him work.

Mr Lahey thought that in order to set Isaac straight he needed hard work, because he had lived (apparently) an overprotected childhood. That is why after school he sent his son in a pressurised surface-suit to Oberon proper, down to the moon, away from the colony, to man the low-G machines that extracted water in the deep and narrow shaft that descended into the crust. It did not matter that the machinery could be operated remotely from the surface or even from the colony. There was always the need for a human pair of eyes there anyways, he would say. Truth was (and Mr Lahey told his son repeatedly), that his father did not trust him to operate heavy machinery remotely. He said that Isaac was too dumb to know how to do something without seeing it in front of him.

If he was late, or missed his ice quota, or generally did something that Mr Lahey considered wrong or unmanly, he would beat his son for good measure. Or else he would send him to the confined small crevices of the ice mines to ‘think’. Of course, that left Isaac very little time to see the friends he did not have anymore. Isaac was also frightened of the mere thought of his father seeing him using his telescope, which is why he kept the case locked under his bed, untouched since the night his brother left.

Perhaps the most terrifying of the moments he spent alone with his father in the old family pod was when Mr Lahey shut himself in his study. There he would sit, drinking whatever liquor of the day he had chosen, listening to the grainy recording of an old song. It was not a song that Isaac had heard before, even if it was obvious that his father had had it for years, and his father never played it loud enough for him to understand the lyrics, but the opening chords were enough to send shivers down his spine. When dad listened to his song and finished his bottle, he was unpredictable. Isaac learnt to fear that song.

**~ * ~**

In the observation bay, Isaac had already oriented the telescope and scribbled coordinates and calculations in his notebook. He put a filter on the lens and leant over to look. After adjusting the focus slightly, he saw it: two small dark discs (one larger than the other) moving across the bright background of the Sun, the transit of Earth from Beacon H. Isaac took a series of stacked pictures and smiled. The transit of Earth was nothing more than an astronomical curiosity, and something that only he cared about in Beacon H, but it was still something that linked him to his more innocent, younger self.

As he observed the Home World slowly dancing around the Sun, Isaac felt a tiny part of him jumping up and down in excitement. How many times had he seen Earth through his telescope, wishing he could see its green hills and blue skies first-hand? How many drawings had he painted, and how many adventures had he had with Jackson playing they had landed there? Too many, was the answer. Isaac had always believed that once he became a spaceman he would have a chance to visit Earth. Even at the furthest corner of the Solar System, Isaac kept telling himself that he would go there one day. And he would do it for his brother and for his mother, who had promised him many times that they would all visit the First Planet.

Isaac made a note on his buzzer to ask Derek again to put forward an application for a permit so he could visit the protected museum-preserve planet. Derek was the Station Commander of Beacon H, but not only that: he was both a native Terran born on Earth _and_ a Hale. His uncle was still on Earth, for crying out loud. All of that had to count for something, Isaac insisted. But the truth was that every time he sent in the forms his application was rejected. Normally after that Derek would invite him to have dinner with him and his wife Braeden, and he would tell Isaac stories about his days back on Earth (which, of course, did nothing but fuel Isaac’s determination). But seeing the transit of Earth gave Isaac a good feeling, as if the universe was giving him a sign. This time he would get to visit Earth.

**~ * ~**

Isaac was seventeen when Jackson appeared back in his life.

Both of them were very different from the two kids who were neighbours and lived with their happy families and played together. They had grown and grown apart. It all added up to Isaac’s belief that whatever had been happening to him had happened for a reason; because he deserved it. That was why when Jackson literally bumped into Isaac one day in the colony hub, Isaac had just mumbled an apology and walked away.

“Hey, hey. Wait there, Lahey,” Jackson said. He sounded angry.

“Hi Jackson.”

“You’re not even going to say hello?”

“We’re not friends anymore,” Isaac arched an eyebrow. Then he remembered a bit more and got things in perspective. “And you know whose fault that was.”

Jackson flinched as if he had been kicked in the stomach.

“Yeah, well… I’ve erm… I know,” his old neighbour was struggling with his words, which came as a surprise, because as far as Isaac could remember, Jackson had never had a problem expressing his thoughts. “I… I have been seeing someone. A therapist, you know? She’s been helping me.”

That was news to Isaac, and it definitely tickled his curiosity. Jackson had transferred schools a year before, but Isaac still had heard rumours that Jackson had been involved in some kanima-induced vandalism and had even injured a couple of people. Kanima was a hard stuff synthesised in the chemical plants of the inner planets, but Isaac had never even thought about taking it. Not that he could have afforded it, anyways.

“Okay…” Isaac did not know where that conversation was going to.

“I, erm…” Jackson sighed. “I am actually glad that I bumped into you, because I wanted to say sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Isaac was now suspicious.

“For being a bad friend. For being angry when I found out about the adoption. For not being there for you when your brother left.”

“There’s no need for that, really,” Isaac was getting uncomfortable. Jackson was poking around a sleeping bear of a topic.

“She says—well, _I_ think there is. Especially because I didn’t say anything that time you came to school all bruised, and I should have known it had to have been something at home.”

“Okay, okay,” Isaac interrupted. “Yes, I accept your apology. I hope that makes you feel better. Now I need to get to work.”

“Wait, do you want to meet some other day? We can go and get Martian fritters and eat them up in the D Gallery.”

“I can’t. I’m busy.”

“I don’t mean today. I’m saying some other day. Any other day.”

“I won't be able, either.”

“What about the weekend?”

“Working.”

“When are you off then?” Jackson was still hopeful.

“I- I- I don’t know. My dad needs me to work in the mine.”

Something in Isaac’s tone and the way he avoided eye contact as he scratched the back of his neck when he mentioned his father rang all sorts of alarms in Jackson’s head. He then noticed how Isaac was wearing an engineer’s scarf, although he would be damned if Isaac was a qualified hydro already. Everything made immediate sense when Isaac tried to walk away mumbling a goodbye and Jackson tried to put a hand on his friend’s shoulder: Isaac did not just flinch, he _cowered_.

“Isaac,” Jackson was now very serious. “What’s wrong?”

“Jackson, please,” Isaac begged with his shoulders slouching and his eyes wet. “Just let it be, okay?”

“Bullshit, he’s done it again, right? No – he’s _still_ doing it!”

Isaac went pale when his friend overtly uncovered his secret. He had not spelt abuse, but he had hit the nail on the head. And Isaac could not have that. _What if dad finds out?_

“No, listen, please. You d- don’t understand.”

“I think I understand.”

“You don’t understand _shit_. And why the fuck do you suddenly care? What’s all this crap about the new and improved Jackson Whittemore?” Isaac lashed out, but he was still more scared than angry.

“Let’s get away from the hub,” Jackson whispered when a few of the colonists turned around to see what was happening.

“I’m not going anywhere with you. Jacks, _please_ , I can’t be late.”

“Why? Because otherwise he’ll beat you?”

Isaac could not deny the accusation, so he just shrugged and began to walk away.

“It was really good to see you, Jacks. I mean it. But I’ve got to go…”

**~ * ~**

When he finished taking pictures of the transit and notes on his observations, Isaac let himself float around the low-G observation bay. As he did that, he unrolled his semi-gel computer from its case and typed a message with the figures and his data to the only other person he knew would care about it: Mason Hewitt. Mason had travelled with him on the colony ship _Talia_ when he left Oberon for Beacon H, but he was now head of the Kuiper Belt Space Observatory, a free-orbiting telescope station studying the furthest reaches of the Solar System.

Isaac asked the AI to turn the lights on, and once he had his telescope packed away, he walked back to his cabin. He had spent two solid hours up there, and even if he had some spare time, he still had work things to do.

From his cabin he went along the main ring straight to the engineering workshop, where Greenberg (his assistant) had put together a list of things that needed doing that week. Most of them were minor fixes and routine maintenance, but there were a lot of them. Isaac had thought that Oberon had been a bit run down (they had allowed a viewing platform full of people to almost collapse!), but Oberon was almost a hundred years old, so Isaac had not been surprised. The big surprise was that Beacon H was only ten years old and it still needed constant fixing, which he found bizarre. From what he saw in the ships that docked there and the crew conversations he overheard in the canteen, it seemed that it was the same everywhere, though. At least in Venus and Mars they had new parts and spares: here, in the arse end of nowhere, they had to make-do with recycling and second hand. Isaac was very good at his job, though, and he made a point of being a stickler for safety issues, but he sometimes wished for innovations or new stuff, not always the same old crap.

“Hey, chief,” a voice called from behind him. Isaac turned around to see Vernon Boyd’s large frame blocking the door. Boyd was Beacon H’s robotics technician, and Isaac technically outranked him, which was the cause for mutual teasing banter. “Erica told me you were skiving today?”

“A, I was not skiving because it was my time off. And B,” Isaac smiled, “Erica is in no position to call people out, because she had to go and visit drilling stations 34 and 35 and she’s still here.”

“She’s just postponing her trip,” Boyd explained nonchalantly. “She’s heard that the _Melissa_ is coming soon and she wanted to be here when that happened…”

When Isaac heard the name of the ship, he lost his usual calm and cocky poise. He also dropped the device he was fixing and nearly fell out of his chair, to Boyd’s great amusement. Last he heard, the _Melissa_ had been on a trip to Mars, but she was apparently coming back far earlier than he had expected.

“The what now soon? How soon?” Isaac might have been blushing, but he luckily had to bend over to pick up the pieces that he had not-very-elegantly thrown over the floor.

“I don’t know. Hayden has called a meeting and I came to make sure you came.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure… I- I- I need a minute. I’ll be ready, I mean—”

“Isaac, relax,” Boyd chuckled as he sat down and crossed his arms over his chest, giving his friend time to finish whatever he was fixing and tidy up the workshop. “I doubt _he_ is coming tonight, so you have time to get ready…”

“You spend way too much time with Erica,” Isaac said as he shoved the spare parts in a drawer and placed the gizmo in a corner. “You used to be cool Boyd,” he concluded with a smirk.

“You’ll find that I still am, even if we’ve all come a long way.”

**~ * ~**

Isaac spent the best part of a month avoiding Jackson. During those weeks he went to school as normal, worked down the mine, and generally kept his father happy. That all changed the night one of the ice-drills snapped down a gallery and the water extraction had to be halted. Isaac happened to be the operative controlling the drill and his father lost it. They were all at work, so he did not beat his son black and blue while the mine watched, but he made a point of descending down to the surface and shove his teenage son into the nearest ice shoot. Isaac spent half the night in that frozen, dark, narrow passage, until one of the miners found him there when the morning shift arrived and pulled him out. Isaac mumbled excuses about getting locked in and trapped without being able to call for help (even if he had cried his lungs out and begged to be let out), but he refused to have anyone check him up.

His father was home when Isaac walked in, waiting patiently in the dining area, ready to tell him how he had put in danger the mine, his job, and the entire plan – whatever that was. On top of that, Isaac was, of course, a useless and worthless waste of space who could not operate a drill or walk out of an ice shoot on his own. Isaac tried to apologise, but Mr Lahey was not interested in that, and he simply punched him in the gut and gave him a couple of kicks while on the ground before heading back to work.

A few minutes later, Isaac’s buzzer beeped with an incoming message.

**_JWHITTEMORE:_ ** _My dad told me there was an accident in the mine. Are you OK?_

Isaac ignored it, but his friend insisted.

**_JWHITTEMORE_ ** _: You’re not in school today. Are you home?_

**_JWHITTEMORE_ ** _: I’m coming over._

Isaac had never expected Jackson to actually mean what he had said. Nobody since his brother left had tried to help Isaac, and the fact that it was Jackson made it even more bizarre. And yet, twenty minutes later someone pounded on the door of the Lahey family pod.

“Isaac, open up.”

“Go away, Jackson,” Isaac mumbled, still lying down on the floor.

But Jackson would not go away, and eventually Isaac brought himself to open the door.

“Jacks, please, just—”

“Space!” Jackson exclaimed when he saw Isaac’s state. He then barged in. “Isaac, what the fuck did your dad do?”

“It’s nothing… I- I- broke the drill, and…”

Jackson was fuming. He was angry at Isaac’s father for beating his kid. He was angry at Isaac for pretending that somehow he deserved that kind of punishment. He was, most of all, angry at himself, because he had suspected this was happening and decided to do _nothing_. He decided to leave the self-loathing for later and to do one damned thing right.

“Pack your stuff.”

“What?” Isaac did not understand what he meant by pack your stuff.

“It means that you get your shit in a bag,” he said as he stormed into Isaac’s room, which had changed a lot since they were kids and played space explorers there. He knelt and looked under the bed, where he found a large rucksack and a large rectangular case. Jackson knew what was in there, and he knew what it had once meant to Isaac, so he pulled it out too.

“I overheard my dad having a conversation with one of the captains that are docked now,” Jackson said aloud as he shoved Isaac’s clothes into the bag. He did not notice that Isaac was now standing just outside his room. “He’s in a colony ship, the _Talia_. They are going to the Kuiper Belt.”

Isaac stood quietly as his friend packed his clothes, a handful of holos, and his old computer while he explained the vague details about this upcoming trip led by a Terran called Derek Hale. Jackson kept talking as he handed Isaac the bag.

“We need to hurry, but is there anything else you need to bring with you?”

Isaac was still processing what was happening. He could not just _leave_ like that… his dad would find out! But by then he would be many AUs away. His father was the Chief Hydro, but surely he could not recall a colony ship back, right? Because if Isaac was to leave (and a strangled voice inside him was telling him that he _had_ to) he would never be able to set foot on Oberon again.

“Isaac, you always wanted to be a spaceman, well now is your effing chance,” Isaac looked down at Jackson when he spoke, and was surprised to see in his face a mixture of fear and determination. “I cannot let you stay _here_. And if I ever get to do one thing right, I hope to do it for you, you hear me?”

“I have to wait for Cam…” was the only real excuse he could think of. “He promised he’d be back for me…”

Jackson had not expected that, and he needed to think this one carefully. “Your brother would not want you to stay here with your dad, right? And if he is really coming to find you, he won’t stop just because you did the best thing you could do and ran away from this!"

Jackson then showed Isaac that he was carrying his telescope case. Isaac touched it gently and looked around his room, which had been so bare and empty since his brother had gone. Isaac was terrified of leaving, but the bruises and injuries he had (and the haunting memories of the night he just spent in the shoot) were much scarier.

Isaac gave an almost imperceptible nod as he held the bag with his stuff tightly against his chest. Jackson patted his friend’s shoulder, and both left the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we go, now full throttle with the story! We get introduced to the main characters around Isaac and get more insight about him. Logistics-wise, this time I've got a handful of already-written chapters, so I will be uploading on a weekly basis until I we eventually catch up with where I'm currently writing in a month or two.
> 
> Also, I don't know why I like so much the idea of Camden, when he is a character that gets mentioned in just a handful of lines in the show. Maybe because I feel Isaac deserves a brother.
> 
> But yeah, I never expected that many people liking this story, so thanks everyone for reading such a niched rarepair fic!


	3. TCS Talia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ll be okay now, kid. This trip… this is your chance. It’s a gift.”
> 
> OR: Jackson finds Isaac a ship on which to leave Oberon behind. Enter Captain Derek Hale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter still alternates between Isaac's past as a teen and his present on Beacon H.

“Hello, boss,” a voice suddenly said behind him. Isaac jumped a foot in the air and automatically turned around, with such bad luck that his hand connected with a face. There was a loud slapping noise. “Space, Lahey, it’s just me.”

“For Earth’s sake, Greenberg!” Isaac shouted, but the mechanic just shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Isaac still lent him a hand and pulled him up, but he had to supress the urge to yell at him and punch him.

“I don’t know how you two work together,” Boyd, who had seen the entire scene from a few paces behind, said through a grin.

“That’s why we don’t work together,” Isaac pointed out. “That’s why I send him to the other side of the station whenever I can.”

“Frankly, we’re quite a good team,” Greenberg added unprompted.

“Hey, Isaac. Hi, Greenberg,” Erica called them once the three men reached the bottom of the stairs and left the engineering workshop.

“ _See_? That’s how you’re meant to do it,” Isaac pointed at Erica, who was waiting for them. “Not sneaking on people, not coming from behind, with a pleasant smile…”

“Yeah, boring, whatever. I just wanted to say that the drills are ready and that I’ll get going with the loading bay gates.”

“Couldn’t you just tell me over the buzz?”

“I could’ve, but a bird told me that a certain ship was docking soon, and I wanted to tell you,” Greenberg said in a sing-song voice. “You know… just in case you didn’t know… so you could get ready?”

As Greenberg raised his eyebrows Isaac went red – but it was not only embarrassment. Isaac clenched his fist and bit his tongue, refraining himself from doing something stupid, like punching Greenberg in the gut.

“Anyways, see you at the meeting!”

As Greenberg walked away, Isaac felt Boyd putting an arm around his shoulders, both as comfort and to hold him back. The situation was not improved by Erica pinching his cheek.

“Oh my _Earth_! Will you two leave me alone for a second?” Isaac spat.

“We can’t,” Erica grinned, playing with fire, although she then did turn around, walking purposefully ahead and leading her two friends towards the Admin block. “We care about you too much.”

“Enough of the best friend crap,” Isaac insisted and wriggled out of Boyd’s arm. Erica and Boyd had become his closest friends, but they seemed to enjoy teasing Isaac way too much whenever the _Melissa_ was around. “How does Greenberg know anyways?”

Erica turned around and stopped. “Let me spell this out for you in words of one syllable so you understand.”

Isaac crossed his arms and rolled his eyes and, in preparation for the sass-off, he smiled maliciously. “Oh, I think I’m gonna like this game.”

“What game?” Erica had been caught on the wrong foot. Isaac had now the initiative.

“The word game you just made up. Please, do go on…”

“Shut up. The thing is, we all know you like him.”

“That still does not tell me why he knows,” the engineer grinned.

“You’re not subtle, that’s why.”

“Uh oh… _subtle_?” Isaac’s grin widened.

“Ohhh, you lost!” Boyd wooed.

“Lost what?” Erica still did not understand.

“The game.”

“Game? We weren’t playing?” Erica’s confusion was turning sour, seeing that it was now Isaac who had the upper hand.

“Ah, but we _were_ ,” Isaac grinned. “The game where speech must be kept to words of just one… sound.”

“’Subtle’ has two syllables,” Boyd pointed out.

“That wasn’t a game!” Erica was inexplicably outraged. Then she pointed at Boyd. “And you just said ‘syllables’!”

“I wasn’t playing,” Boyd excused himself and put his hands up. It was always fun teasing Erica, the sourest loser in the colony, although she also had a reputation for keeping grudges and serving very, _very_ cold revenge.

“We were talking about Isaac’s crush,” the blonde turned the tables. “Because the _Melissa_ is docking tomorrow.”

“Don’t be a sore loser, Reyes,” Isaac hurried towards the Admin block, leaving Erica and Boyd behind.

“It’s understandable, Lahey, don’t get me wrong,” Erica said louder as Isaac walked away. “Who would not have a _massive_ crush on dashing Captain Scott McCall?”

**~ * ~**

If Jackson had not been there with him all the time, Isaac might have bolted back home, hoping and wishing his father would not notice. Maybe he still was in time to make it to the orbital elevator and go down for his shift.

“That’s it,” Jackson nudged him and nodded at the white-and-silver colony ship that was docked outside bay 21. The name _TCS Talia_ was written across the side, and it had the crest of the Earth Council clearly visible below it. “The _Talia_ is off to establish a new colony in the Kuiper Belt, and they’re leaving today, which means that you will be half-way to Neptune by the time your father comes looking for you. I don’t think I could have found you a sweeter deal, Isaac.”

“I’m not sure…” Isaac admitted. Seeing the ship in front of him made it clear that Jackson had really meant it when he said he was getting him out of Oberon and out of his father’s way.

“It’s very simple. We are going to sneak you onto the ship when the crew is not looking, and then we’re going to hide you, and then once you’re out of here you’ll have time to explain everything—”

“Explain what, precisely?” a voice rumbled behind the two teenagers, making them jump. Behind them, staring them down, was a dark-haired and bearded man in a captain’s uniform. He did not seem very friendly, and Isaac got some very odd vibes from him, but all of his concerns turned into deeply-ingrained childhood curiosity when he saw that on his uniform’s chest he was wearing a flipping _Earth_ badge.

“We’re—” Jackson began, but the man did not let him finish.

“I’m not fully familiar with the Uranian charter, but I am sure as hell that any stowaways I find on my ship will be handed over to the nearest station’s authorities.”

“We’re _not_ stowaways,” Jackson pointed out.

“No. Not yet. But you want to,” Derek explained flatly. “Two teenagers with all their stuff packed, lurking outside a colony ship?”

“Sir, please,” Jackson changed his tactic. “It’s my friend who needs to go.”

“Come on, kids. I’ll take you back to your parents,” the captain said in a tired sigh, and he had never expected to see the reaction of the taller of the two kids: he went pale and tense, clutching his bag firmly, while his eyes screamed and begged him not to.

“Captain Hale, my friend needs to leave the colony.”

“He should have known better than knocking girls up. And how do you know my name?”

“It’s not _that_ , you idiot,” Jackson defied. “You need to take him on your ship!”

“He’s underage,” the captain kept arguing with Jackson as if Isaac was not there. “I’d be accused of kidnapping.”

“You’re going to the Belt,” Jackson replied. “Nobody will come looking for him to the frontier.”

“They’d come looking for _me_ ,” Derek insisted. He and Jackson went on arguing back and forth until Isaac finally spoke.

“Captain Hale, I- I- I can’t go back home. Not back to my _dad_ ,” the way Isaac pleaded, the unmistakable fear in his voice, must have hit a particular spot in the captain, because he stopped to listen, even if he crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll work on the ship, I promise. I’ve worked in the mines, I know my way around tools… I’ll enlist in the Kuiper Rangers once we get there. Or- or you can dump me when we get to Neptune, or on Pluto, or wherever, but not here.”

The captain looked at Isaac as if he had just realised he was there. There was something in the kid’s face that was vaguely familiar.

“What has your father done?”

Isaac flinched back and refused to speak. Jackson stepped in for him. “That’s none of your business.”

“It is if he wants to go on my ship.”

“It’s evidently something _bad_ ,” Jackson insisted without spelling out what Mr Lahey had done and would certainly continue doing to his son.

The unspoken implications floated around the captain’s head for a couple of heartbeats. He could clearly see that the kid wanted out and had even planned to jump on the first ship that left Oberon.

“What’s your name again?”

“Isaac, sir. Isaac Lahey.”

“Lahey? Are you related to Camden Lahey?”

Jackson and Isaac’s faces turned into a mask of surprise. Cam had left Oberon years ago and was never heard from again, despite the promise he had made to his little brother. After two years, the last thing Isaac had ever expected was for a random captain to know him.

“Is he on board?” Isaac blurted, not sure if he wanted his brother to be in there or not, because it would mean that Cam had returned to Oberon but stayed hidden from him. Isaac was happy to forgive him for that if he was there and alive, though.

“No, but I met him on Ceres.”

“When?” Isaac needed to know.

“About a year ago. He sounded like he was from Uranus, but he didn’t like to talk about himself that much,” Captain Hale remembered sombrely. “He always avoided it… much in the same way you just did.”

Isaac was not sure what to say. He wanted to know about his brother. He was desperate to hear _more_ , but the way the older man was talking about him was giving him a very bad feeling. It was Jackson, however, who spoke next, seeing that both were brooding in silence.

“Captain Hale, you knew Cam. Maybe you were his friend, maybe not; I don’t know. But Isaac is his brother, and he needs to leave Oberon.”

The captain looked at Isaac and Jackson for a few seconds. He knew this was one of those moments his mother had talked to him about: a moment in which he would be able to make a difference for someone. He might regret it later, but he knew that he had the chance to give that kid an opportunity. He sighed.

“Name is Derek,” the captain said. “We are going to Ultima Thule and from there we will join the rest of the colonial expedition.”

Derek gave a few more instructions and explanations about what Isaac would have to do and what he was expected to learn, and what life in the colonies meant, but Isaac did not hear a thing. He was still in shock to hear that he was going on a spaceship. He was going to become a spaceman. He was leaving his father and all the painful memories of Oberon behind.

“Get your stuff, and let’s get going before anyone else sees you,” Derek looked around and walked off to the docking bay.

“Jacks… I’m going?” Isaac still was not sure if he could believe it.

“Don’t make a big fuss now,” Isaac’s friend tried to shrug it off, but Isaac brought him in for a quick hug. “Hurry up,” Jackson insisted trying to mask the emotion in his voice with a casual cough.

“Thank you.”

“Go.”

Isaac gave him a nervous smile. With his bag across his shoulder and his telescope under his arm, Isaac walked off, following Derek Hale into the _Talia_.

**~ * ~**

“Did you hear me?”

“Uh? Oh! Hey, Derek. Sorry, I was miles away,” Isaac excused himself. He was walking up the stairs to Station Command in the Admin block for their scheduled meeting, and Isaac was too lost in his own thoughts about the _Melissa_ , so he completely missed Station Commander Derek Hale walking by his side.

“I said, how’s the air liquefier in B3?” One of the air recycling and purifying systems had been leaking outside Block B, and people only noticed when a little forest of Kuiper lichens spawned out of a vent.

“Oh, that’s all sorted.”

“What were you thinking of?” Derek asked with all his lack of nonchalance.

“Oh, nothing,” Isaac readjusted his engineer’s scarf (dark blue with one thick golden line) as he continued walking. “Just the list of things that still need doing.”

“I see…” Derek knew Isaac well, and he knew that if the engineer decided to clam up about something, the only thing he could do was wait.

“But there is one thing I wanted to ask,” Isaac added, and Derek turned with renewed interest.

“Sure.”

“I want to put another application for a permit to visit Earth,” the engineer asked with hopeful determination.

“Isaac…” Derek sighed. He had heard this before.

“I know, I know, but I’m about to complete ten years of active service, and I have an impeccable record—”

“Yeah, and thanks to whom do you have an impeccable record?” Derek pointed out. He might have had to bail out and pull strings to hush the couple of times Isaac had got into fights in his early days on Beacon H.

Isaac stopped and exaggeratedly rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, but Derek just looked back at him with his hands on his hips.

“I know, but you also know that I’ve always wanted to go to Earth.”

“It’s not that big of a deal…”

 _Not a big deal? The First Planet?_ Isaac had to bite his tongue. It was easy for Derek to say that, because he had been born there. He had not grown up on a satellite station in the outer planets knowing Earth only as a distant green-blue glimmering speck.

“Okay, I know it is for you,” Derek had to admit. Isaac’s face was easy to read most times, but the incredulous stare and the cocked head were a very direct message. “Do you want to come for dinner tomorrow and we’ll have a chat? A proper chat this time,” Derek reassured. “We will put forward a winning application.”

“Tomorrow?” the engineer made quick calculations in his head.

“Oh, unless you’ve got _other_ plans for tomorrow?” Derek asked with a smug grin, going back to Beacon H’s apparent favourite conversation topic. “Dinner with someone else, perhaps?”

Isaac walked ahead without Derek without another word. Sometimes, he really hated him.

**~ * ~**

Isaac followed Captain Hale meekly and, with only one last glance back, he waved both Jackson and all his life on Oberon away. The older man took him through the narrow and busy corridors of the colony ship to a cabin which was clearly designed to host a family of colonists, but that was empty for some reason.

“Stay here and wait until I come and find you. We need to leave the Uranus council but I won’t take long.”

Isaac nodded as he kept his telescope case close against his chest in the centre of the cabin. Derek stood at the door for a second before speaking again.

“You’ll be okay now, kid. This trip… this is your chance. It’s a _gift_.”

Derek left and the door slid shut. Isaac sat on the edge of one of the bunks. He really had done it. He had left. He was free. He was a flipping _spaceman_! Isaac was not sure if he was even allowed to feel this happy. Had Cam felt like this when he left? Had _he_ been a burden for his brother, though? What did this Hale know about Camden?

The _Talia_ left not an hour after Isaac boarded. Yet another hour later Isaac was still in the same cabin, thinking if they had forgotten about him, when a mysterious hand chucked some wrapped lunch at him, before sliding the door again. Isaac muttered a quiet ‘thank you’ before tucking in. Time continued to pass, and Isaac lost track. He was still lost in his thoughts when Derek finally came back in with three women, all looking serious and with concerned expressions. Isaac automatically stood up, although he still held tight to his telescope.

“Mr Lahey,” Derek began in a seriously official tone. Of course, the main issue Isaac had was that he was not Mr Lahey – Mr Lahey was his _dad_. But he did not have a chance to point this out. “I am Derek Hale, Captain of the Terran Colony Ship _Talia_. These are Lieutenant Braeden Hale, Chief Petty Officer Veronica Reyes, and Deputy Colony Administrator Leonor Hewitt.”

The three women nodded when they were named, and Isaac only managed a shy wave.

“It has been brought to my attention that you are a stowaway onboard this ship,” Isaac went as white as a sheet when he heard these words and was about to argue, but Derek held a hand up, ordering him to remain quiet. “It is my duty as Captain to inform you that Clandestine Travellers are strictly forbidden in all Solar System inter-planetary trips, as they constitute breaches of Health and Safety regulations and other Protocols that apply to inter-system travel.”

Isaac took a step back. He had been betrayed? This Derek person was going to send him back to his father on Oberon. To make things worse, Derek dared give him a badly-practiced smile.

“However,” Derek continued before Isaac could intervene and plea for his case. The three women beside him looked unmoved. “I have also been notified by Oberon Assembly Deputy David Whittemore that you are a skilled mechanic and almost qualified as an engineer, correct?”

“Yes, but—” And now Jackson had ratted him to his dad? What was going on?

“I have also been informed that you were in a situation of Domestic Abuse, as specified in the Old Terran Constitutions and ratified in the Uranus Charters, and that you have no living relatives on your home colony, correct?”

Isaac did not understand the legal language, but hearing ‘Domestic Abuse’ spoken out loud felt like a jar of ice water. He was shocked. It had been difficult for him to admit it to Jackson, who was his friend, and now this random stranger was flaunting it out publicly in front of these people? Just so he could deport him back to Oberon? And why the emphasis on the lack of relatives on the colony? Isaac was confused as to what to say, because he wanted both to cry and admit it and to lash at Derek and deny everything.

“Derek, stop it,” Braeden, the Lieutenant, hissed at the Captain. “You have the tact of a Ceres miner.”

“It is the procedure, and we must follow it if we want this to work,” Derek said back through gritted teeth.

“Isaac,” Administrator Hewitt whispered with a warm smile. “Please be assured that we are not deporting you back to Oberon, but we do need to get this done before Oberon calls us looking for you.”

“What?” Isaac was now very confused.

“Isaac, please,” Derek was now pleading with his eyes, as if he actually cared. “I _need_ you to say yes.”

Isaac looked around and swallowed. Yes, he had been abused. But it had been his father. He surely did it because it was best for him? But that had not worked with Jackson, and his ribs still hurt if he tried to breathe too deep.

“Yes,” he admitted in a small voice. To Isaac’s surprise, Derek sighed in relief, and the three women beside him grinned, all clearly pleased.

“Then, as captain of the _TCS Talia_ , taking into account your technical skills and considering your unsafe and destitute home situation, I am granting you colonial asylum on board this ship and on its ultimate destination. Are there any objections?”

Isaac looked at Derek under a different light. His face seemed softer, somehow. He barely heard the three women agreeing with Derek, who then went on to give another short speech which included words like ‘foster care’, ‘pending qualification’, ‘conditional to enlisting’, and ‘Beacon H’. But Isaac did not care. Whatever this surreal legal procedure in international space had been, it clearly meant something. A turning point. A point of no return.

**~ * ~**

Isaac and Derek reached Station Command, and they stood outside the meeting room as the door was still locked. Meanwhile, Erica and Boyd (who arrived a few minutes later), sat on one of the benches and did their usual thing where Erica went on a long rant about the topic of the day (this time, it seemed, was her ‘I swear the mining crews are thick’ speech). Greenberg, who again appeared out of nowhere, was being his usual self and was too busy playing with his buzzer. After a few more minutes of waiting, Derek sighed and began to flick through the most recent reports. Isaac knew that, as Station Commander, he was not best pleased with the fact that he had to wait for the administrator, but Braeden had managed to convince her husband that getting angry at these things never achieved anything. There was also the thing that Derek was more than glad that Hayden had taken up all of the tedious administrative stuff from him, so waiting was worth Derek’s while.

Everyone was busy (and, thankfully, not teasing Isaac about Scott), which left the Uranian-born engineer free to walk nervously up and down the corridor as he admired the station through the panoramic window.

As far as colony stations were concerned, Beacon H had a fairly simple design. It had a main axis that pointed towards the sun (with observation bays at the Oort and Sun ends). The axis was surrounded by a hexagonal block, the station core, which was where the main storage bays were, together with the fusion generators and other such areas. Because it was so close to the rotating axis, the station core was a <1G area, and mostly restricted. Three elevator corridors connected the core and the axis with the ring, which was the long, annular corridor (constantly rotating to generate 1G) that connected the three other main components of Beacon H.

Two of them were the cross-shaped residential Blocks (A and B). Each arm of the cross was nothing but a long corridor with accommodation units on either side, with the ceiling pointing towards the core. The likes of Derek and Braeden, or Erica’s parents, lived in the classier and more spacious dwellings on the sun side, whereas the miners and other crew lived on the Oort side. Isaac lived close to the ‘village pump’, the intersection of the four arms with the ring and the elevator to the core, which he did not mind, because whenever he wanted to look into space he just went to either of the OBs. His cabin was large enough for him in any case: he had a bedroom and a study, and other than his own hygiene pod, his secret luxury was a domestic food processor he had bought off a Neptunian cruise captain and not-so-secretly fitted into his cabin himself.

The third one was the Communal Block, which Isaac, in his Oberonian ways, could only think of as ‘the hub’. It was a large rectangular structure built along the ring, again with the floor pointing outwards and the top looking at the core. The central strip was known as the Avenue, which was nothing more than the space that connected either access to the ring. There were four main buildings, three levels high, on each side of the avenue. On the Sun side were Administration (including Station Command), Security, Engineering (where Isaac’s workshop was located) and the Medic Bay. On the Oort side there were two leisure and market blocks, the canteen, and the Education Facility. The platform was also important because the main docks and landing platforms connected there.

Isaac took pride in the fact that he had been there from the very beginning: he had helped build Beacon H all those years ago. Of course, by the time the _Talia_ had reached the Kuiper Belt, the main axis and the core had already been set up, and it took the effort of many colonists and other Kuiper Rangers to put together the different modules that had been pre-assembled in the large shipyards of Neptune. But he had helped. And he had learnt a trade. He had left all his life on Oberon behind for good and become a spaceman.

**~ * ~**

“Hi, I’m Mason,” a kid who was no more than a couple of years younger than Isaac introduced himself.

“I’m Isaac.”

“I know, my mom told me,” Mason beamed. “What’s in your box?”

Isaac looked behind him. As part of his deal with Derek, Isaac had been put under the foster care of one of the colonist families, which ended up being the Hewitts. Leonor had helped Isaac carry his things back to their family cabin and left him there to meet his new foster brother, who Isaac was beginning to think was very nosy.

“It’s, erm… it’s my telescope?”

“Oh, _whoa_. Can I see it?”

Isaac did not want anyone to see his telescope. People would mock him for his telescope. A telescope was not a manly thing to have, and it just showed that his mother had indulged him too much. Or, at least, that was what his father always told him. The telescope had been a present from his brother and his mother, so Isaac was not sure either if he wanted anyone else to see it – foster family or not. But then Mason seemed genuinely curious.

“What do you know about telescopes?” he asked cautiously, still not decided.

Mason beamed, as if he had been waiting for years for someone to ask him that very question. He then proceeded to explain all he knew about naked stargazing, telescopes, the Solar System, astronomy in general, and planetology in particular. Surprised and happy with that answer, Isaac agreed to show Mason his telescope, but he did not take it out the box. Mason seemed happy with that.

“It’s difficult to do stargazing on this colony ship,” the younger teen explained. “These vessels were never designed with observation domes or even one of the dirty old astro-pods from the old days. But I hear that Beacon H will have one.”

“What is Beacon H?”

“Dude!” Mason smiled, and Isaac found him less unsettling. “It’s where we’re going to! It’s our new _home_!”

The trip to the Kuiper Belt from Oberon took several weeks.

The first ten days were a slow cruise between Uranus and Neptune. During that long week, Isaac refused to leave the Hewitts’ cabin, but that allowed him to slowly and reluctantly get to know his foster family better. The Hewitts were nice enough, and much closer to the ideal family Isaac remembered from when he was little. They were emigrating from the crowded Jovian systems because the Kuiper Belt offered better chances of promotion than the dismayingly nepotistic Jovian bureaucracy. Mason was their only child, and he was delighted with the idea of having an unexpected older brother. Mason was constantly asking Isaac questions, from games and stories to stargazing and what they wanted to do in the new colony. Thankfully he never asked about why he had to leave Oberon; neither Mr nor Mrs Hewitt ever mentioned it either. Isaac guessed that whatever little information Derek had had, the Hewitts were aware of it.

When the _Talia_ docked at Poseidon II (Neptune’s main settlement), many colonists left the ship to visit the station and its views of the Earth-sky-blue atmosphere, but Isaac was reluctant to leave the ship, so he stayed in despite Mason’s pleas.

Isaac tried to go and find Captain Hale, but he soon realised that he did not know anything about the ship, so he spent more than a couple of hours exploring the bowels of the _Talia_. There were a handful of leisure areas with restaurants and a holo archive; there were also dozens upon dozens of accommodation corridors, and even more dimly-lit cargo bays. It was in one of them that he bumped into Vernon Boyd.

“What are you doing here?”

Isaac, who had only been snooping idly, was startled by the low voice coming from the larger man. He was not taller than him, but he was wider, heavier and stronger. He was also probably just out of his teens, and he was wearing a crew uniform.

“I, erm… I’m sorry, I was just—”

“Oh, you’re the kid that the captain rescued on Uranus, right?” the man stood up and cleaned his greasy hands on a rag that he quickly put back in his pocket.

 _Rescued?_ Isaac was not sure if he had been rescued. But it had been the captain who had escorted him onboard. Had Derek been talking about him?

“Hi? I’m Isaac.”

“I’m Boyd,” the young man smiled with a mouthful of teeth. “I’m the robotics apprentice. Derek said you were a mechanic?”

“I’d prefer to become an engineer, but yes, I am. Well, I want to. I’m not qualified yet…”

“Oh, don’t worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for you to get enough trade hours to qualify while we finish Beacon H.”

“The colony isn’t _finished_?” That was new, although it was clear that there was much about this new colony he did not know.

“No?” Boyd chuckled. “Did you think we would just arrive to a finished colony? Where’d be the fun in that?”

Boyd’s enthusiasm was contagious, and Isaac was suddenly excited about the opportunity ahead of them. He would be able to build a new colony! This gave a completely different twist to becoming a spaceman. His father had insisted he was too dumb to do anything useful, but at least he could work with machines, right? He could build stuff. And, given the chance, he would build them solid, and strong, and _safe_. There would be no snapping bolts or collapsing platforms in his station.

“Where are you staying then?”

“Oh, I… I’m with the Hewitts.”

“Cool, we’re almost neighbours then. Wanna grab a bite?”

Isaac nodded. He was not sure if he could trust Boyd yet, but at least he was friendly, and he knew things about the colony ship and about what was going to happen when they reached the Belt, so he decided to tag along.

Boyd took him to a different level, away from the loading bays and the storage compartments, up to a canteen with a translucid floor, so diners could see into the space that surrounded the ship. Right now, they could see the deep-ice blue of Neptune far below them.

“Oh, look. There’s Erica,” Boyd was about to pat Isaac’s shoulder, but the blond teen flinched out of instinct. Boyd looked at Isaac with concern and curiosity, but he quickly put his hand away. “Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” Isaac said, slightly embarrassed, and avoiding Boyd’s eyes. “It’s just I- I-“

“Whatever, man,” Boyd gave him yet another broad smile. “I’m sorry. We’re all together in this colony shit for the long term, so we might as well all get along, right? If you say no patting, no patting then. No problem.”

Isaac forced himself to smile, and Boyd then went on as if nothing had happened.

“Erica! Look whom I’ve met!”

“Oh, hi!” Erica was a blonde girl, probably as old as Boyd. To Isaac she looked not necessarily older, but more mature. She was certainly bold and confident. “Are you the last colonist? You’ve been the talk of the ship.”

“What?” Isaac froze before he even sat down. Why were these people talking about him? True, he had arrived in odd circumstances, but he just wished he could blend into the background and pass unnoticed. Maybe running away to a tiny space colony was not such a great plan?

“You’ve met my mom already, haven’t you?” Isaac had to stop for a second, but Erica did remind him of one of the fierce women who had interviewed him.

“Officer Reyes?”

“That’s her,” Erica smiled. It was sincere and welcoming, but something told Isaac that Erica could very easily be the complete opposite. “Don’t worry, we only know what Derek has told us. My mother was basically sworn to secrecy.”

“What did Derek say?”

“Oh, he just told us,” she meant her and Boyd, “because we are perhaps the closest in age to you. Most of the colonists are late-twenty-somethings gagging to start a family in the frontier,” Erica rolled her eyes. It was right then that Isaac knew that he was going to like that girl. “He told us that you needed a new start and that the Belt was your best option.”

“Are you hungry then?” Boyd pointed at the tactile screen on the table as the menu popped up, not giving Isaac a chance to comment.

They ordered lunch, and Isaac sat there, mostly listening to Boyd and Erica talk. He did not have much to add, and he was still trying to get used to the idea that kids his age did, in fact, want to be around him. Perhaps the fact that he was not covered in bruises anymore helped.

After a couple of days, the _Talia_ left Neptune and entered, officially, into the Kuiper Belt, the vast stretch of the Solar System littered with planetoids, asteroids and other floating debris. They spent three weeks crossing it, sailing beyond Pluto’s odd orbit, stopping at Ultima Thule and, eventually, reaching the small planetoid where Beacon H was partly anchored to. During those days before arrival, Isaac spent more and more time with Erica and Boyd. That did not mean that he ignored Mason or the Hewitts (after all, he was living with them), but despite all their efforts, Isaac was not sure if he was ready to have a happy family life after all. Not while his father was still back on Oberon, doing Space knows what. Not while his brother was still disappeared in the inner sectors.

**~ * ~**

“Okay, listen everybody,” Hayden called out when everyone was sitting around the table.

Hayden had been in Beacon H for almost as long as Isaac, but she had not arrived on the _Talia_. She was a shorter and dark-haired version of Erica: determined and slightly scary. Isaac was not sure why (perhaps some of her mannerisms, or maybe her mild Saturnian accent), but she reminded him of his father. Unconsciously, that always predisposed Isaac to tread carefully around her and avoid crossing her at all costs – even if Boyd and Greenberg made jokes about him for it.

“The _MCSS Melissa_ arrives tomorrow,” Hayden continued. Boyd and Braeden intently looked with knowing smiles at Isaac, who suddenly turned a healthy shade of pink. But then Erica wooed, and Isaac’s face turned crimson. This time he was truly ready to murder her. “They’re arriving early, and the loads of ore are not here yet, so they’ll have to stay here for a while.”

“What a big shame, isn’t it, Isaac?” Erica stage whispered into her friend’s ear.

“Erica, I swear on Earth I might kick you in the airlock and flush you away if you don’t stop!” Isaac hissed.

“Really, Isaac?” Hayden said from the head of the table. Isaac shivered; she had sounded too similar to his father for his comfort. “This isn’t school anymore.”

“Sorry…”

“Anyway, usual routine will apply when she docks, even if the cargo reload will have to be postponed. Erica, what are the reports on the tholin stations of the Oort side?”

Isaac stopped listening. He needed to focus away from the flashing images of his father sounding disappointed at him (which usually was the prelude to a beating). He thought of Mason and the Hewitts, who had fostered him and loved him. He thought of Boyd and Erica, who despite everything would do _anything_ for him. He looked at Derek, who was sitting opposite; the moody and brooding space captain who had given him his best chance to escape Oberon. He definitely had come a long way, so maybe he deserved something else. Maybe Scott would see that? He looked like the kind of person who would see the best in him, without pitying him or judging him for his past. Maybe he deserved having someone like Scott in his life. Maybe tomorrow he would find out.

**~ * ~**

“Come in,” Derek called from the bridge, and Isaac walked in. The command centre of the _Talia_ was now empty, as if Derek had sent everyone out only to have a quiet talk.

Isaac had never been in that part of the colony ship. He had not seen much of Derek during the trip, truth be told, as Derek had been too busy and Isaac had preferred to stick with Mason, Erica, and Boyd. They had just arrived at Beacon H after some very long days crossing the Kuiper Belt.

“Is that it?” Isaac asked, as he looked out the window at the metallic skeleton of what would become their new home.

“It is,” Derek smiled. “You know that you will need to work there, right?”

“I… yes. I know,” Isaac turned away from the window. “I also wanted, erm… to _thank_ you Derek. I don’t think I… I mean, I don’t know what I’d have done…”

“You need to thank your friend who badgered me into smuggling you onboard. I just did what was right. I hope it was right?”

Isaac and Derek looked at each other in silence for a few seconds. It was clear that neither was good with words.

“What do you know about my brother?” Isaac blurted the question that had been bugging him since the day he met Derek.

Derek sighed. He knew this eventually was coming. But Isaac spoke again before Derek could say anything.

“Did he mention me? Did he say why he left? Or if he was going to come back?” as Isaac’s questions piled up, he became more and more upset. “Did he say why he abandoned me with our dad and never bothered to contact me? Or did he say why he broke his promise to come and find me? Because that’s what he _did_ , you know?”

Isaac had wound himself up so tightly that he clenched his fists and set his jaw. Derek gave him a few seconds to breathe in before answering.

“I met him in the Inner Belt. He was part of the crew that stacked and loaded the _Talia_.” Isaac seemed to relax a notch with Derek’s tale. “I could immediately tell he was from Uranus. You all sound the same…” Derek smiled, trying to lighten the mood. “I was working with him for a few months, but he never wanted to talk about himself or his old life.”

There was a pause after that. For Isaac that was not new, as it was roughly what Derek had told him when they first met.

“The day came when I had to leave Ceres. I cannot say that I had got to know your brother very well, because he did not seem to let anyone do it, but he was hard working and honest. _And_ skilled. I offered him the chance to join in the colonial expedition and come to the Outer Belt, because we would have needed good men like him. But he said he couldn’t…”

Isaac did not say a word. He just waited for the captain to continue.

“I did ask why, because I really thought that he would be a great asset to the colony, and I never gave his reply much thought until I met you.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that he couldn’t go and become a spaceman on his own, and that there was one last thing he needed to do. I found it funny, that he used ‘spaceman’. I mean, back on Earth that’s a very old term. Very romantic. Almost mythical… But it means something else for you, right? For you two, perhaps?”

The Uranian did not answer Derek’s question. His brother was still worrying about him only _last year_? But why had he not tried to contact? What had he been waiting for?

“I received last night a message from Ceres,” Derek added with a sad sigh. “I had asked an old friend of mine if he knew anything about a Camden Lahey who had been involved in the loading of the _Talia_. Last anyone has heard of him is that he got in a brawl and highjacked a ship.”

“Wait—can’t you or your friend message him? Call him? Can’t we try—”

“Isaac…”

“It’s my brother, Derek!”

“He’s gone radio silent,” Derek insisted. “There’s nothing else I could do. That _we_ can do. Not yet.”

Isaac looked at Derek. He was angry and confused. His brother was alive, and still cared for him, but had made no attempts to contact or to come back? Something did not fit in Derek’s story. Or in whatever Derek had been told.

“I’m sorry,” Derek added, incapable of hiding his own disappointment and impotence.

“So I am just to sit here and perfect the art of doing nothing?” Isaac scoffed.

“You can stay here and wait, and take advantage of this chance, which is what your brother said he wanted for you.”

But Isaac did not want to hear anymore, so he stormed out of the bridge. If Derek was lying, then it was a piss-poor lie that did nothing for him. If he was telling the truth, then… Then it sucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, for anyone curious enough about Beacon H, I drew some sketches [here](https://rhyslahey.tumblr.com/post/629580899843014656/so-for-my-current-teen-wolf-fic-set-in-space-i) (which is a link to my tumblr in case I failed to embed the image in the text or the link breaks)!


	4. MCSS Melissa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Excuse me, captain? I’m Isaac Lahey, Engineer 3rd class,” he introduced himself with his best smirk. “I’m the station’s trainee engineer. Welcome to Beacon H.”
> 
> OR: We learn more about how Scott and Isaac met while Isaac gets ready for the arrival of the MCSS Melissa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter still has time jumps. Also, see the glossary I've added to the end!

The morning after on Beacon H, Isaac had a quick shower and headed to the canteen to get some breakfast. He would have preferred to avoid Erica, because there was no way in the Solar System she was not going to ask him about the arrival of the _Melissa_. But she was there already, and waved at him so he would sit with her.

“Are you ready?” Erica asked with a big grin.

“No?” Isaac admitted.

“Did you get any sleep?” she said as she had another spoonful of her breakfast porridge. Isaac knew that ‘porridge’ on Earth had meant something very different from the warm, thick, and milky liquid that the kitchen dispenser gave them every morning, but only the governor of Jupiter could afford real milk and oats. Isaac and his brother had shared a handful of sultanas once though, when they visited their grandparents on Io. Maybe Derek had also tasted _actual_ cow’s milk. Maybe he had drank glacier water too, or had peacock eggs, real cocoa chocolate, or some other decadent Arty luxury.

“Erm…”

“You don’t look like you did, darling.”

Isaac immediately turned around looking for any reflective surface, which was quite difficult in the canteen.

“Do I really look like crap?” Isaac asked when he could not check himself.

“You do,” she said flatly. “But it’s nothing I can’t fix.”

“Cheers for that…” Isaac grabbed his own bowl of porridge from the dispenser and tucked in. He kept his eyes to his bowl, so he did not see Hayden walking until it was too late.

“Morning, you two,” she said with faux enthusiasm as she dropped two piles of datapads next to Isaac’s breakfast. “Are we all ready for today?”

Erica looked at Isaac with mischief, and the engineer, with one glare, swore to kick her into low-G rooms and let her float around for a week if she dared say anything about Scott. Erica looked smug, but gave him an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgement.

“What are those?” Erica pointed her spoon at the datapads with a face of disgust.

“Those are all the reports from the tholin crackers you did _not_ visit,” Hayden pushed a pile towards Erica, clearly disapproving of the planetologist still being there rather than out in the Belt doing her work. “These others are a combination of things that need fixing here on Beacon H and preliminary requests from the _Melissa_.”

“Is it the air liquefier of B3 again?” Isaac furrowed his brow.

“Indeed it is,” Hayden said. Isaac threw his spoon on the table.

“Can I bash it with a wrench and pray for the best?” Isaac leant on the table and gave her a mocking grin.

Hayden rolled her eyes and turned around to leave. “You can strap Greenberg to it as far as it is fixed, for all I care,” she added as she left the canteen.

“When’s the _Melissa_ due?” Erica asked aloud with all her non-innocence before Hayden was out of earshot.

The station Administrator turned around, rolled her eyes and checked her wrist buzzer. “Four hours.”

“Perfect, okay, thanks, bye!” Erica grinned as Hayden walked away. Then she turned to Isaac. “You better come home later. We’ll sort you out.”

“I don’t need sorting out. You are aware that I am not seventeen anymore, and that _even then_ pushing me onto boys never worked,” Isaac looked casually over the datapads as he had another spoonful of breakfast.

“Don’t be a spoilsport! Mom will love to see you. You haven’t visited her in months, and you know better than to cross her.”

Isaac had to smile at that.

“Fine… but please, do not mess with my hair, though?”

“Those curls are wild, and you need them clipped,” Erica decided in a tone that admitted no reply.

Isaac shook his head and finished his porridge as he read through the datapads. That fucking B3 air system was going to be the death of him… He pulled his semi-gel computer from his bag and unrolled it on the table, plugged the datapads, and began to make calculations as he ate in silence.

“Hey, you two,” Boyd came along next with his usual litre-mug of coffee. “Working hard so early?”

“Are the H12 bots available today?” Isaac asked without looking away from his computer.

“He’s avoiding all talk about the _Melissa_ ,” Erica whispered with a grin, but Boyd decided not to tease his friend.

“They should be. What are they for?”

“Well, according to this—”

“You two are _so_ boring sometimes, it’s unbelievable,” Erica huffed.

“You’re the one who could not play the syllable game for more than a minute,” now Isaac was on the attack, as his smirk clearly indicated.

“I’m with Isaac there,” Boyd said and quickly hid his face in his coffee, before Erica decided that he had chosen the wrong moment to side against her.

“I bet you I can go for a… more _more_ long time than you with that game of yours!” Erica flustered for a second as she avoided long words.

“Great. Let us see who can go for a… more long time,” Isaac’s eyes glistened. “The game is on!”

**~ * ~**

Erica left the two of them there soon after, as she needed to go to the monitoring room to control the fault ruptures in the new asteroids she was currently mining. Isaac and Boyd, however, spent the next hour sorting bots out and thinking about something that could fix the leaking air liquefier. Eventually, Boyd was called down to the core, and Isaac wandered back to his workshop. He had only three hours until the _Melissa_ docked and Scott landed, and he still had to fix the leak, program the H12’s and go to see Erica before she dragged him to her place herself. He put his tools in his bag, sent Greenberg a message to meet him at B3, and locked the workshop behind him. As Isaac walked along the Avenue and into the ring, he could not stop the giddy smile on his face. He was going to see _Scott_! And have a sit-down chat, take him out for a drink, maybe dinner at the fancy top-end of the canteen (the terrace that had the skylight), and he would explain how he felt. And then everything would be fine. He had spent most of the night pacing around his room convincing himself about this, and now Isaac was more than ready.

Scott and the _MCSS Melissa_ had been visiting Beacon H for the last four years. The first time that she docked, Isaac had just qualified as an engineer (3rd class), and he was proudly wearing his new grey scarf that accredited him as such. The _Melissa_ ’s hatch opened and out came the crew, but Isaac was stunned when he saw the young man in the captain’s jacket. He was dashingly handsome, with soft brown eyes, short black hair, and a nice toned body clearly noticeable under his top. His jaw was slightly uneven, but that only accentuated his face. Isaac was ashamed of admitting it, but he could not deny that he had been attracted to the captain there and then. And Isaac _really_ wanted to invite that captain back to his place.

As the station engineer, he had to go through all incoming vessels to make sure that they were all okay, and assist in anything the crew might need. This always involved having a chat with the captain. So, that first time, Isaac pulled his cockiest grin and decided to take full advantage of his unavoidable chat to charm the captain. Isaac wanted to believe he was a realist: he knew some guys found him handsome, and he tried to take advantage of that. He had had no trouble before bringing hot crewmen back to his room, and Isaac had always been content with that. He was just a dumb _grease monkey_ , a wannabe-engineer, on a boring station in the furthest corner of the Solar System, which was unlikely to impress anyone. If he was honest with himself, Isaac never expected anyone to really care for him beyond that anyways, but he was willing to accept it. At least he was not back on Oberon.

“Excuse me, captain? I’m Isaac Lahey, Engineer 3rd class,” he introduced himself with his best smirk. “I’m the station’s trainee engineer. Welcome to Beacon H.”

Isaac, however, had not been prepared to be completely disarmed within two seconds of meeting the captain.

“Oh, hey, I’m Scott McCall, nice to meet you.”

And there it was. A perfect smile that glowed brighter than he imagined the sun to shine on Mercury, and that turned his insides into a soft mush.

“Anything I can do for _you_ today?” he tried to regain his poise, but this guy was looking into his eyes and smiling as if Isaac was the only thing that mattered right then.

“Oh, I don’t think so. We should be fine. We had quite a sweet ride here, to be fair,” Scott kept smiling, now waving his crew goodbye as they saluted past him on their way to Beacon H. Isaac’s brain was shorting. “But feel free to do any routine checks you need to?”

“Oh, well. I- I can do that. I guess I’ll do that?” he arched an eyebrow; his plan long abandoned and his tactic completely useless.

“That’d be awesome,” Scott said, as if it did not matter. “I’ve got to go and do some paperwork with the customs people, but we are going to be docked in Beacon H for a standard week? Maybe you could show me around later?”

“Me?” Isaac was very confused. That was not the way it was meant to happen. Nice guys with megawatt smiles and soft eyes did not ask Isaac to show them around.

“If you can, of course?” Scott now rose his eyebrows, realising that he might have said something wrong. “See? We have a long-term contract here, so we will be coming back often. So I’d like to know this place,” the captain justified himself.

What Isaac heard, what he saw, and what his brain processed did not seem to match. Did this young captain ( _how old was he and how come he was a captain already?_ ) want to know more about Beacon H or about Isaac? And was he coming back to see _him_ or was it only work? And why could he not stop looking into those brown eyes?

“Yeah, I could,” Isaac retrenched into defensive mode, which was always safer. Isaac could happily lie in his defensive mode, even if Scott was very confusing.

“Awesome! I’ve got to go now, though, but buzz me when you’re done?”

“I… yeah?”

“It’s ‘McCall’ with an A and double-L.”

Then Scott patted Isaac’s shoulder, and he was so confused that he did not even flinch. By the time Isaac was fully aware of his surroundings again (and not in a space-captain shaped pink cloud), Scott had gone, the _Melissa_ was empty, and the engineer was left scratching the back of his head trying to understand what had just happened.

The thing is that later that day Isaac called Scott and showed him around Beacon H (which was a short tour in any case). Scott asked him various things about the Avenue, and the ring, and the core, and he was always kind and polite, and made a point of letting Isaac know that he was listening to whatever he had to say, and Isaac was simply not used to any of that. He had not expected any of that to happen. So, when Scott asked him if he would join the crew of the _Melissa_ for dinner, he panicked, although he managed to politely decline, mumbling an excuse, and heading back home.

Of course, Isaac’s biggest mistake that night was calling Erica to come to his room so he could explain to her what a _day_ it had been, but not before downing two shots of Beacon H’s premium brew (a secret stash of which he kept in his cabin for such emergencies). Later (after an unspeakable amount of teasing and questioning and making Isaac blush) it became evident that he should have rung Mason, who was basically his little brother. Isaac would have got from him more advice and less sass. But Mason was busy studying, and Isaac really needed a stiff drink.

During the week that Scott was in Beacon H, Isaac debated constantly whether he wanted to avoid him or to actively seek him. He ended up bumping into him a couple of times and then when he had to do the final checks and paperwork to allow the _Melissa_ to leave. In all cases, Scott was his usual nice, caring and attentive self and Isaac ended up as stricken as that first day.

“I.. erm… here’s your form,” Isaac awkwardly handed over a datapad with his report. He bit his lip and looked at Scott, and then at Scott’s hand, hoping maybe their fingers would brush when he handed over the paperwork “Have a nice trip?” Isaac was not sure if he was saying goodbye yet or not.

“Thanks,” Scott beamed. Isaac froze. “And thanks for everything! I’ll see you when we come back?”

“I won’t be going anywhere.”

“Cool! We’re off to Neptune this time, but should be back in six weeks!”

And Scott did it _again_ ; the unsolicited pat and squeeze on his arm that left a nice burning sensation on Isaac’s skin. Mason could touch him because he trusted him, and Erica did it regardless because deep inside he knew she cared for him, but this stranger he had just met had been doing it all along, and Isaac had not felt the usual dread and urge to recoil away?

Isaac stood there, watching as the hatches shut and the _Melissa_ took off, disappearing into space, heading towards the inner planets and the Sun. He had to stay there, in the cold, dark, last corner of the inhabited cosmos, thinking that once again one casual encounter with a passing stranger had turned his world upside down. Although as opposed to what had happened with Derek, Isaac was not sure if this was for better or for worse.

**~ * ~**

It took Isaac more than an hour to fix the air liquefier. While he checked the holo plans, Greenberg opened up the panels to expose the tubes and fans that pumped the air into the liquefier and centrifugal filter and recycler. When the first panel came down, however, the first thing they saw was a thick bush of Kuiper lichens and other moss-like plants that had evolved in those human-made space environments. After clearing all out and spraying a liquid to purge whatever spores might have been around, the mechanics could finally get to work. The robots that Boyd had sent their way proved essential in realigning the tubes to the correct gradient and tightening the seals.

After giving Greenberg some final instructions, Isaac raced from Block B to A. Most settlers had to walk around the ring, but Isaac had access to the passageways that ran through the core, so he went to the B ‘village pump’ and took the elevator. He got off at the very end, and navigated swiftly through the low-gravity core, until he reached the elevator to Block A.

“Where were you? You are late,” Erica said as she opened her door. Erica and her mother lived in a triple cabin even if there were just the two of them, a perk inherited from Ms Reyes’ days as Chief Petty Officer of the _Talia_.

“There was moss in the ducts,” Isaac did not even have to lie, but after noticing the way Erica chose her words very deliberately, he had to measure his own, lest he said a long word by mistake. ‘Lichen’ was out of the question. “And some of us are in fact at work still? Don’t you have a space rock to blast?”

“Come in and say hi to Mom. She has been ask… she _wants_ to see you.”

Isaac walked in and gave Ms Reyes a hug and a quick catch up. She was far less scary now than when Isaac first met her on the _Talia_. She now worked on docking control. Knowing Erica, and knowing Ms Reyes, the planetologist had probably let her mother know about her plan, so Veronica probably had taken the day off just to be with Isaac.

“First of all,” Erica asked when she took him to the spare room. “What will you wear to meet Scott?”

“What I have on now? I did not think I would have to get dressed. I’ve got my new scarf, though.”

“I can’t do much about those stains.”

“ _About_ ,” Isaac grinned as he put two fingers up, and she clipped him round the ears.

“Stop it with your stupid game,” Erica scowled, pretending that she had not been playing, but Isaac _knew_. “Now sit down and look at me.”

Isaac shut up and sat still as Erica walked around him, eyeing him carefully and considering her options. Soon she pulled a hair trimmer and a tub of a white cream that smelled strongly of Jovian rock salt.

“Don’t clip it too short, please?”

“Shut your cake hole,” she said with a malicious grin as the trimmer buzzed.

Isaac closed his eyes shut as Erica buzzed around his head. He felt locks falling over his shoulders and his back, and Erica slapped his hand when he tried to brush them away, ordering him not to move. After a while, Erica stopped and brought in a mirror. Isaac was actually quite impressed with his shorter and tidier curls around the sides and back.

“I mean…. I like it? But isn’t this, like, prehistoric?” he said as he inspected his reflection.

“Earth! You Icers can be backwards sometimes,” she teased.

 _It’s easy for her to say that_ , Isaac thought, _you innerds are always so_ hip _._ “Thanks, though,” he added with a smile.

“Just remember who sorted all out when you throw him on your bed tonight and—”

“Yep, that’s enough, I better go,” Isaac interrupted and was about to leave but Erica beat him to the door.

“You’re not wearing that.”

“Erica…”

“Not to knock the socks of Captain Scott McHunk off.”

“Erica…”

“I swear to Space, Isaac Lahey,” she used a threatening finger, and even if she was a good few inches shorter, Isaac recoiled. “You will let me interfere on this, because I cannot take four more years of you being high on life when you know he’s coming and then moping and miserable whenever he leaves.”

Isaac scrunched his face in frustration, but only because he hated when Erica was right (although the hatred was mutual, and Isaac had a very dedicated smug face he used only to say ‘I told you so’ to her).

For four years, the _Melissa_ had been coming and going with its usual routine. She docked on Beacon H and loaded her cargo, and she stayed there for a week or more before going back to the Solar System. She ferried frozen tholins from the Kuiper asteroids to the processing plants of Neptune, where they were turned into anything from atmospheric gases to hydroponic substrates and the vital fuel of the fusion drives. At least once every standard year she sailed back home to Mars. Sometimes she stopped to load and unload extra cargoes to the stations of Saturn or Jupiter. Once she went all the way to Venus. Round trips to Neptune were never long, taking no more than a month and a half, but longer hauls, considering the distance between the outer rim of the Kuiper Belt and the inner planets, could take much longer.

This, of course, meant that Isaac always spent long periods of time away from Scott, during which he spent too much time thinking about him.

The comings and goings of the _Melissa_ thus dictated Isaac’s general mood. Isaac was always elated in anticipation, pushing to the surface the warm sensation he felt whenever Scott was around him, whenever the Martian glider was on her way to Beacon H. Whenever Scott landed, and for as long as he was around, Isaac was in a Scott-shaped cloud. He never actually told him how he felt, because there was no way that a dashing captain who had travelled the solar system would ever be interested in a simple mechanic. Scott was always nice to him, but simply because that was the kind of person he was: kind, determined, brave. Isaac was content just to be around him. When Scott was on Beacon H, the light seemed brighter and warmer, as if he brought the sun with him. This of course turned Oortwards whenever the _Melissa_ had to take off. Isaac would sit down and ponder on his folly, how it was pointless for him to get so excited about him when he never actually dared tell Scott anything – because he knew deep inside that Scott would never want anything with him.

Isaac had never been under the illusion that he was not an open book to the people who knew him. He was a terrible liar, and Derek and Erica needed only one quick glance to know if something was wrong. Mason was the worst of them, because he did not only know when something was wrong – he would actually guess what the problem was precisely.

“The _Melissa_ has not landed yet,” Erica checked the time. “You have one more hour. I’ll frogmarch you to your cabin if necessary, but you’re not wearing that old uniform.”

“But the scarf?” Isaac was very attached to the scarf, mostly because it showed that he was _not_ just a mechanic, thank you very much.

“The scarf alone does not cut it, dear,” she insisted.

“You look terrific, Isaac. Ignore her,” Ms Reyes said from the door. She had just turned up. “You go and tell that captain how you feel. And remember that I can ban them from landing here ever again if you need me to,” she added with a wink as Isaac felt his cheeks flush red.

“Hopefully that won’t be necessary…”

“Come on, we are in Block A. We can still go to your place and find something nicer. Or, at least, something _clean_. You dirty mechanics…”

“I’m an _engineer_? I trained a lot for that,” Isaac insisted; the difference mattered to him. “Greenberg is the mechanic.”

“I don’t care. I care about that hole on your shirt. I can see your nipple,” she pointed.

“No, you can’t. It’s a tiny hole,” Isaac looked down to see that it was nothing but a few unstitched knots, but then Erica stepped forward, dug her finger into it, and pulled with a loud tearing noise. “Erica!!”

“Now you can,” she jabbed her finger on Isaac’s unexpectedly exposed nipple. “Come one, Lahey. I already told you I’m doing this for my sanity’s sake too.”

**~ * ~**

By the time the _MCSS Melissa_ docked, Isaac was already standing outside the bay. All the Sunside docks were busy, so the _Melissa_ had to coast to the Oortside. He was wearing a brand new, green with white dots working shirt with his sleeves rolled up that matched his blue and golden engineer scarf. Technically, as a member of the Kuiper Corps of Engineers of the Ultima Thule Frontier Rangers, he was meant to wear the militia uniform. In fact, a large proportion of the settlers of Beacon H were part of the Frontier Rangers in one way or another, but hardly anyone wore the uniform. Only Derek seemed to enjoy being in it. In any case, Erica had done her best (Isaac had drawn a line when it came to his shoes, because he had refused to wear anything but his tough working boots), and Isaac was actually quite pleased with what she had done.

Station control announced that the _Melissa_ was about to dock, and Isaac checked out one of the small observation windows to see a large, white/grey merchant ship with the crest of the Mars Council: a large orange circle representing the planet with two thin blue-green lines running across it. Isaac could see how the ship slowly and carefully manoeuvred into position. Various robotic umbilical links were connected to the ship. Next, he heard the pneumatic connections shifting into position, securing the airtightness of the hatch and anchoring the ship into position (always essential in rotating stations).

Isaac’s smile grew a mile wide as he hurried towards the exit. An orange light flashed, indicating that the airlock was being pressurised. Then a green light flashed, indicating that the air was being purified and that the high-intensity UV lights were flashing properly, and then there was the familiar double beep that indicated that the door was about to open. The crew of the Melissa poured out.

Isaac had spent enough time around the _Melissa_ to know most of the crew. There were always people in minor positions that came and went, and it was not unusual for her to carry passengers or colonists, but the core of the crew seemed to be always the same.

First out was Liam Dunbar. He was wearing a navy jacket with a big red-orange circle with two crossed swords that identified him as the Security Officer. Isaac had talked enough with him over the years to know that he would probably get on with Mason like a house on fire. In fact, there had been a couple of occasions when both had coincided in Beacon H and they had definitely been friendly. Not that Isaac had a secret plan to press those two into an unexpected friendship (one that, by complete and pure ‘accident’, would give him an excuse to be around Scott more often). Liam looked tired but, knowing him, he would probably head first to the exercise rooms of the leisure block before going to the crew accommodation blocks. He walked into Beacon H without even saying hello.

Next out was Lydia Martin, a fierce-looking redhead who exuded an easy air of authority that inspired Isaac with respect and admiration. She was the Mars Political Commissioner for the Kuiper Belt, perhaps the closest thing they had to an ambassador to the outer rim outposts. As such, she was a regular (but not exclusive) passenger on the _Melissa_. Her outfit perfectly reflected her position, wearing what Isaac imagined in the inner planets was a formal sky blue blouse with a black jacket. Lydia saw Isaac and waved at him, indicating that she needed to have a word. He knew better than to say no, but Scott tended to be amongst the last to leave, so he was not too worried.

“Afternoon, Ms Martin,” Isaac smiled. “Good to have you back.”

“Thank you, Mr Lahey.”

Lydia looked at him carefully, clearly thinking about something silently and her smile faded. Isaac could not really read her expression, but she seemed worried? Before the engineer could dwell on that, she spoke to him.

“Do you happen to know where Commander Hale is?”

“I guess he’s in the admin block?” he ventured. “Everything good?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry,” she said lightly. “Would you mind accompanying me to see him?”

That was an odd request. “I… sort of need to do the routine checks with the captain,” Isaac said.

“Don’t you have another mechanic who could do that today?”

“Not right now, sorry. Not really.”

“Are you sure you cannot come with me for a second?” Lydia insisted, Isaac did not know why.

“I kind of want to have a chat with the captain? About the ship…” Isaac added.

“I don’t think—”

“Oh, there you are Lyds.” That was Mieczysław ‘Stiles’ Stilinski, the radio and comms operator of the _Melissa_ and Lydia Martin’s partner. He was carrying a bag over his shoulder and he was wearing around his neck some very old-fashioned headphones (so old that they were almost a relic from the earliest days of the Space Age), just so he could show off he was a radio operator. Partly because of that, partly because of his Venusian accent, Isaac felt recurrent urges to punch his face, but the two of them had developed a highly-complex teasing war that was somehow more satisfying. “Hello, Lahey.”

“Hey, Stiles,” Isaac crossed his arms on his chest and cocked his head. “Are you going to damage my station again?”

“That was only once and you know it,” Stiles furrowed his brow. “I did not know how that hydropod worked, and I expected there to be some sort of drain.”

“And at no point you thought that you could just, oh, _I don’t know_ , turn the water off while you found out?”

“You’re always so helpful with your annoying hindsight, you know that?”

Considering Stiles’ resentful glare, Isaac counted that as a win, so he smirked back as smugly as he could.

“Anyways, I’ve got a job to do, and I’m waiting for your captain.”

“Isaac,” Lydia was about to say when he mentioned Scott, but Stiles interrupted again.

“Come on, Lyds. Let’s find Commander Hale and tell him about the tariff thing you told me about.”

Stiles walked away from the bay without looking back. Lydia stayed for a brief second longer, only to finish saying. “You can come and find me later, and we can talk.”

“Okay?” Isaac said as the Commissioner walked away into the ‘hub’.

He was very confused, because he did not know what all that was about, but Isaac soon forgot about that as he turned around to wait for Scott.

Malia came next. She was a distant cousin of Derek’s, although she was not a Terran. He never asked for the details, because it was some obscure family story that included Derek’s uncle and a wild night out on Mars. She was in charge of docking and loading, so she was usually around Isaac whenever he had to be onboard. For a Rocker, she was easy to talk to and Isaac liked her. When she walked out, she immediately clocked Isaac and her face became one of shock.

"Oh, _space_ … Hello, Isaac,” Malia forced a reassuring smile. She failed. “You’re looking dapper today. Nice scarf.”

“Oh, hey. Yes, I know,” Isaac’s giddy grin grew even wider. “Erm... Malia, is Scott coming out?” He poked his head up, hoping to see the captain any second.

“Have you seen Lydia?” she asked pointedly, ignoring his question.

“Yeah? She wanted me to go to see Derek, but then Stiles took her away.”

“Ah, shit, okay. Come with me, how do I put this…” Malia stopped to think for a second, biting her thumb as she did so, before turning to look directly into Isaac’s eyes. “I think you need to know something.”

“Uh huh… okay? Has it got to be now? Because I kind of need to see Scott… about the ship.”

“Yeah, right, you would choose today of all days, of course,” she said, mostly to herself. Her anxiety was getting contagious.

“What’s wrong with Scott?” Isaac suddenly flustered. Something was off, and he was going to find out.

“Listen, Isaac, Scott has—”

But Isaac did not need to be told. He looked up to see that Scott was finally exiting the _Melissa_ , but he was not doing it alone. In fact, he was walking hand in hand with a tall and thin dark-haired young woman. Her skin was light and lightly freckled, and she had a smile that could rival Scott’s. From the signs on her jacket she seemed to be a pilot or a navigator. 2nd class, apparently. She had her fingers laced with Scott’s, and they looked so happy together. They were talking about something and Scott said something funny and she laughed lightly.

Something inside Isaac broke there and then. He felt angry.

Malia looked back to confirm her suspicions, but before she could say anything, the engineer had disappeared into the crowd.

**~ * ~**

_Of course, this would happen. You kept fooling yourself, thinking that a fucking space captain would want anything with you. And guess what? Dad was right._

Isaac marched down the Avenue and into the ring, heading straight towards his cabin, and bumping shoulders with people on his way. Once inside his pod he tossed his buzzer on the bed and he went to the far corner of his cabin, kneeling down, trying to make himself as small as he could, hoping that a hole opened up and sucked him into space. He had to fight his urge to punch and break something.

Isaac should have seen this coming. But _no_ , he had to believe that Scott McCall would actually like him back. He might have, though, if he had had the balls to tell him earlier! Isaac stamped his feet on the floor. He noticed that his eyes were stinging, so he pulled his scarf off, rubbed his eyes into it, and then lobbed it across the cabin.

_You’re an idiot, Lahey._

His buzzer beeped every now and then with messages and calls, but he ignored them all. He just asked his cabin’s computer to play music, which ended up being mostly the kind of Uranian trash that people on the inner planets always found annoying. At one point, Boyd came knocking on his door, but Isaac told him to leave him alone. That was the same reply he had for Braeden and for Erica. Behind his door he heard them threatening him to call Derek, but Isaac could not care less. He had prepped himself up for that day, the day that after four long years he would tell the first man he had felt something significant for that he dreamt about him, and that he gave him a warm feeling in his chest that forced him to smile when he was around him. But he had waited too fucking long, and now he was linking hands with that Martian _tart_. Isaac wanted to vomit at his lost chance and his crippling indecision.

Then, of course, by a cruel joke of the universe, the next song that played was not high-pitched trash. It was a vocal melody he knew all too well.

_We pine and sigh while waiting, /and let there be no mirth; /until the day we’re on our way /to the cool green hills of Earth._

Isaac shouted at the computer to stop. With the silence came the certainty that the people outside his cabin had not left yet.

“Isaac,” Erica said, but she did not sound angry anymore. “Malia has explained…”

 _Great, now it’s not because I have skipped my shift anymore_. Isaac’s room was spacious enough, especially for one person, but he felt the walls creeping closer by the second, as if he were in that ice shoot in the mine back on Oberon.

“Thanks, Dad,” he muttered as he scratched the back of his neck unnecessarily hard. “Now I can’t even have a normal meltdown, you have to fucking shove me in that fucking ice shoot!”

“Isaac!” now it was Derek outside his door. “Isaac, you don’t have to talk to us if you don’t want to, but you should talk to someone.” His buzzer began to beep. “I’ve called the observatory; they’ve wired you up if you want to talk to Mason.”

His buzzer kept shaking and beeping with an incoming call, and it would not stop. If Derek and Erica were still outside his pod, they did not say anything. Eventually, Isaac forced himself up and picked up his telecommunicator. He climbed into bed, buried himself under the covers, and passed the incoming call to his pod’s computer.

“Hey, Mason,” he said from under the sheets. His voice shakier than he had intended.

There was a relieved sigh coming through the bed speakers. “I’m sorry, Isaac.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Erica and Isaac is actually quite fun to do, but I broke my own heart while writing the last bit because Scisaac has always been my OTP. But don't worry, Isaac will meet a mysterious blue-eyed mechanic in the next chapter (spoiler alert, it's Brett), and he will be VERY CONFUSED.


	5. Crush crash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Who’s your mechanic?” Isaac asked, speaking to Allison for the first time, as he pulled an omnitool off his belt and let it hover over a handful of plates.  
> “That’d be me!”  
> Isaac turned around to look at the ship mechanic.
> 
> OR: Isaac is forced to go back to the Melissa, where he meets a new member of the crew and has another encounter with Scott.

The following morning, Isaac forced himself to wake up, crawl out of bed, and do a normal day. Staying in bed all day would help nothing, and it would only give him time to overthink, which is what he needed the least. Mason rang him before he left for breakfast to check on him, but Isaac told him that he would be okay. The Uranian tried to make his way to the admin building for the morning briefing as quick as possible, hoping to avoid any chance encounters with Scott or that man-snatching she-wolf, whose name he had not even learnt – and he did not want to either. He slipped into the canteen, grabbed a bite to go, and waited outside the meeting room.

Erica and Boyd arrived a while later.

“Wasn’t expecting you to be here,” Erica arched an eyebrow. “I knew you’d come,” she clarified after Isaac pulled a face at the implication of her first sentence. “See? I brought you a peach pastry, thinking you wouldn’t even stop for breakfast.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, taking the flaky treat.

Boyd sat next to him on the bench, but remained silent.

“Got anything to say?” Isaac snapped unprompted, sensing the questions floating around.

“Me? Nah. I know it sucks,” he said with his usual calm voice, trying to placate Isaac’s anger. “You know where to find us, and I know that when you’re ready you’ll come and talk to us. Yesterday you scared us a bit but at least we got Mason to talk to you.”

“I do have an entire list of questions, though,” Erica added. “And if you want to go and lob moss balls from the station bilge at that bitch, we can.”

Isaac shook his head as they both laughed, dissipating part of the tension. At that point Derek and Braeden turned up. Isaac was ashamed of how he treated his boss the day before, but Derek seemed to acknowledge his silent apology with one of his eyebrow wriggles. They did not have much time to say anything, because Hayden turned up and led them all into the room.

The meeting went on, but Isaac did not pay any attention. His thoughts kept shifting towards Scott, towards all the things he had already imagined them doing together. Isaac was mad at himself for having let this happen. He kept thinking about all the opportunities he had lost, all the chances he had had to change the current outcome… It made him want to growl.

At one point, Hayden asked him about the air liquefier, which Isaac had been expecting, so he gave a vague reply about all being fixed, but he did warn about the big problem with the lichens and mosses growing there. The administrator took note of that and went on to the following items on her list. After a few minutes they were done, and they were about to get ready to leave when Hayden put up another slide on their shared screen.

“Oh, and one last thing,” she said before everyone left. “There has been a further delay on the deliveries from the outer crackers. We don’t know yet when they will be able to arrive.”

Isaac froze in his seat at the implications. He looked at Erica for confirmation, and she decided to ask the question.

“So the bay where the _Melissa_ is docked is going to be still occupied for the foreseeable future?”

“I’m afraid so. The _Melissa_ will have to stay put until further notice.”

**~ * ~**

During the following couple of days, Isaac lived in a constant state of paranoid anger, fearing the moment that Scott would turn up with that woman right behind him, and he would gloat about his amazing girlfriend, and Isaac would not get a chance to say how much he liked him. He spent most of his days hidden in the engineering workshop, asking Greenberg to do his jobs outside and relying on Boyd or Erica to drop by with some food. He took long diversions in order to avoid the visiting crew accommodation blocks, and tried to be inconspicuous (which was considerably difficult, since he was the station chief engineer) but, overall, he seemed to have reached a stable and Scott-less routine. Isaac’s friends became increasingly worried, because he dashed home after his shift finished, spoke in harsh barks, and he no longer came for an after work drink; he did not even visit the hydroponics bay, which even if it was largely automatised, was one of Isaac’s favourite off-time activities.

Isaac managed to dodge Derek’s and Erica’s scowls and cheer-up chats, but he did not avoid Hayden, who came to his workshop looking for him one morning.

“Chief of Engineering, Engineer 1st class Lahey,” she said formally from the door. _Crap_. Isaac knew it could not be good.

“Station Administrator Romero, what a pleasant surprise,” he lied.

Hayden walked in slowly and sighed. “Isaac, I’m afraid I have some orders for you.”

“Okay…” Isaac put his tools and his notepad away and turned to look at Hayden. Perhaps she needed him to fix the orbital mining stations, so he would have to leave Beacon H and live in a distant asteroid for the next few days. That would be an unexpectedly cheerful perspective.

“There is some problem with the _Melissa_.”

“Aha…” Isaac nodded, slowly understanding what was about to happen. He tried to steady his breathing.

“Captain McCall has requested our help.” By ‘our’ she had meant ‘Isaac’s’.

“Aha…” He felt his nails dig into his palms.

“This is not the kind of thing Greenberg can do.”

“Aha…” By this point, Isaac was sure he was going red in the face. Hayden did not comment.

“We need you to please go there and assist the captain and his crew with whatever is wrong with their ship.”

“I see…” Isaac forced himself to remain calm and professional. “May I—”

“It needs to be now, Isaac,” Hayden insisted in a firm tone, although her face was at least sympathetic.

“What about if—”

“Greenberg knows nothing about astronaval engineering. Grab your kit now, and I’ll come with you.”

Isaac found Hayden scary and imposing, and not in the way he found Erica scary and imposing, but at least she seemed to be on his side this one time?

“Hayden… I’d rather not.”

From Hayden’s sigh, it seemed that the administrator had seen this coming.

“Isaac, Scott has asked for your help.”

Despite his internal torture and the mixed sense of failure and betrayal and impotence, Isaac knew that somehow he still could not say no to Scott. Despite what he had done to him. It was not Scott’s fault. It was all his own. The captain was too nice and did not deserve Isaac’s silent treatment. And if Isaac did not do the one thing he was good at, then his father would have been right.

“I will request Mr Boyd’s assistance then,” he added after a pause. At least Isaac had a legitimate excuse to call in the robotics technician for mechanical help (and moral support). Having Boyd around was sure to calm him down.

“Yeah, of course,” Hayden seemed relieved. “But we should hurry up.”

Fifteen minutes later, Isaac was with Hayden and Boyd at the main hatch of the _MCSS Melissa_. Isaac readjusted his scarf and he shrugged away from Boyd when he was about to put his hand on his shoulder.

“I’m _fine_ ,” he hissed.

“Yes, chief,” Boyd furrowed his brow. He had not seen Isaac this angry in a long while.

“Hey, hello!” Scott called as he walked out of his ship, waving and smiling. Isaac’s insides churned in pain and something else. Maybe he was angry at Scott after all. “Hey, Isaac, good to see you!”

“Hi, Scott.”

“How busy have you been? I hadn’t seen you yet!”

Scott kept beaming in his same friendly and inviting way. This time, however, when Scott put his hand on Isaac’s shoulder, as he had done dozens of times in the past, Isaac did not feel warmth in his chest; only pain for the one thing he had always thought he would have but that he had lost without even having. Isaac forced himself to shrug Scott’s hand off (a part of him still wanted the captain to be touchy-feely with him), and the captain looked confused and taken aback.

“There has been a lot of trouble with the off-station mining,” Boyd intervened with a plausible excuse. “And with air purifiers.”

“And there’s a problem with your ship?” Hayden focused the conversation.

“Oh, yes,” Scott said still looking at Isaac, trying to understand what might have happened. Isaac did not look back. “Our pilot has noticed something, and our new mechanic has not been able to find out why we’re having that trouble,” the captain said as he led them into the _Melissa_.

The _Melissa_ was a relatively new merchant ship, with a standard fusion drive, three accommodation decks, and two cargo compartments. The lights inside were a pure white, which always contrasted with the colour hued illumination that tried to mimic the twenty-four-hour Terran day in Beacon H. The corridors were plated in white and cream, with the characteristic reddish orange horizontal band Isaac had seen on other Martian ships. They took a left turn from the entrance and climbed a flight of steps before reaching the bridge, with its sleek silver-grey control panels and the off-blue light that glowed from the ship’s computers. Isaac, however, did not have much time to admire the room because there, waiting for them in her uniform, was _her_.

“So, well, this is Allison Argent,” Scott’s face seemed to glow when he mentioned her name, and Isaac noticed. It was as unmistakable as a dagger to his chest. Earth! Did he hate her… “She is our pilot and navigator. Allison, these are Ms Romero, the Station Administrator; Mr Boyd who’s the robotech; and this is… this is Isaac, Beacon H’s Chief of Engineering.” The captain was about to smile, but something in the way Isaac looked at him stopped him.

“Hi, nice to meet you all,” she said with a sincere smile as she shook everyone’s hands. Isaac might have heard Erica’s voice whispering to him to throw a damp ball of bilge moss at her.

“Scott? Where’s the—oh, hello,” Liam walked in looking down at a datapad, and only noticed the station personnel when he looked up. He then stood to attention and saluted. “Sorry pardon, captain. I didn’t know there were visitors on board.”

“You all know Mr Dunbar, I presume?” Scott introduced his crewman. “He’s our Security Officer.”

“Hello, Liam,” Hayden said with an unexpectedly bright smile, and slightly too quickly.

“Oh! Hey, Hayden. You okay?” nothing in his tone seemed to indicate that he had registered Hayden’s sudden change and interest.

Scott and Liam had a quick conversation, but Isaac could only observe the way Hayden was looking at Liam, how her body posture and her face had completely changed when the shorter man had walked in. Sudden and cold realisation washed down Isaac when he understood what was going on between the two of them. Or rather, with only one of them without the other knowing or even acknowledging. The next obvious connection was his own current predicament with the captain of the _Melissa_. Isaac’s rage dissipated, as if someone had opened a valve, letting all the steam out. Isaac looked around for an airlock to jump out into space.

“Shall we go down?” Allison asked. Isaac had been so lost in thought that he had not noticed when Scott and Liam walked away with Hayden. Allison was obviously going to take him and Boyd to the engine bowels of the ship.

“Please, lead the way…”

**~ * ~**

Allison took them down various levels as she explained how they were having problems with the veering and steering, and that they had only noticed when they docked down on Beacon H. Isaac thanked Earth that Boyd was there with him, because he was asking all the relevant questions while he could only think about Scott and Allison, Scott with Allison, and Scott without him. Hayden and Liam had added an extra embarrassing layer to all his Scott situation that he did not want to dwell much on.

They eventually reached a point of the ship where Allison stopped. Three panels had been taken off the wall, and there were a number of tubes and cables visible. There was also a service hatch there, which opened into a small tunnel that probably led down narrow corridors to other key sections of the ship. Isaac felt a cold sweat running down his forehead when he saw that tiny entrance that looked so much like an ice shoot. Thankfully, they had a handful of Boyd’s small robots in case the solution was down there.

“We reckon the problem to be somewhere here,” Allison explained, and Isaac took a deep breath to focus on his job. He was a professional, he was a damned good engineer, and there was no ship he could not fix. “We haven’t found exactly where or what the issue is.”

“Who’s your mechanic?” Isaac asked, speaking to Allison for the first time, as he pulled an omnitool off his belt and let it hover over a handful of plates.

“That’d be me!”

Isaac turned around to look at the ship mechanic. He was tall. Probably as tall as himself, if not slightly taller? His hair was a darker shade of blond, clipped very short around the sides and back, and his eyes were pale blue. He was leaning casually against the wall in a tight-fitting and grease-stained boiler suit with the Mars Council crest on his chest.

“I’m Brett Talbot,” he introduced himself, extending his hand. The rest of the crew were Rockers, but Brett sounded slightly different, and Isaac could not guess where he was from.

Where Scott was all bright smiles and cheerful eyes, Brett was calmer and poised. Not that he looked serious or sad, but he was definitely less bubbly than the captain. He also sounded confident, and yet Isaac did not sense any resentment towards them being there (in the same way that other ship mechanics refused to have any station engineer fiddle or tinkle with their vessels).

“Hi… I’m Isaac, I’m the station’s engineer,” he introduced himself as he took Brett’s hand, and Brett gave him a tiny speck of a side smile, which fascinated him. For some reason he did not understand, Isaac really wanted to see him smiling wide.

“And I’m Boyd,” the robotics technician stepped forward to shake Brett’s hand as well.

“Whatever happened to this ship, it has probably been going on for a while,” Brett said after the brief introductions. “I’m sure I could fix it for now, but whatever has been causing the troubles will still be broken, and I admit that I do not know where to start looking.”

Isaac nodded as he eyed Brett from head to toe one last time before focusing all his attention on the _Melissa_. He was in no state to think about blue-eyed mechanics who came and went on merchant ships with Scott. He squatted down on his haunches and looked at the pipes and cables in front of him.

“Could I have the holo plans for the _Melissa_?” he asked to nobody in particular, and coughed to try to sound serious.

“I already requested them from Captain McCall,” Allison replied, handing him a holo disc. Isaac took it and actually _smiled_ at her in lieu of a ‘thank you’. Isaac rolled out his computer and plugged the data disc into the soft gel and waited until the holographic model of the _Melissa_ was glowing in front of him. Then he took a sharp breath and clicked his tongue, in the universal way mechanics have to give bad news.

“This is going to take a while,” Isaac admitted, his eyes focused on the holo. “It won’t be pretty and it won’t be cheap. I don’t want to lie, but without even checking what exactly is wrong I can tell you that much. I assume the side thrusters were underperforming until they gave up?”

“Yes,” Brett said.

“And I imagine that for now you have been making do with a rearranged hydraulic steering?” he guessed, pointing at something on the holo plan.

“Correct,” Brett confirmed again.

“Then this is going to take a while,” Isaac sighed as he rolled his computer and stood up. The holographic projection disappeared.

“A while? We’re on a schedule! How long is a while?” Allison asked, slightly panicked. “And you’re leaving?”

“I couldn’t possibly tell,” the engineer said with a surprisingly satisfied smirk. It was petty, yes, and it was the tiniest victory, but it was something against Allison. “I’m going to have a thorough look at these plans and then will send someone to come and help.”

“You won’t be coming then?” Brett arched an eyebrow. Isaac did not know if it was judgemental or disappointed. He did not know either why, suddenly, he cared.

The thing was that Isaac did not want to come into the _Melissa_. He did not want to see Allison. He did not want to see Scott. He was mildly indifferent towards Brett, truth be told. But he really needed to get away from Scott. On the other hand, he also needed to be professional, and to do his job right. Isaac bit his lip and paused for a second.

“We’ll see once I have a clearer idea... Boyd, could you please run a detailed laser scan with a couple of your bunnies?” His friend looked back at him with understanding and nodded.

As Isaac left, Boyd stayed with Brett and Allison for a short while, explaining that he would drop a couple of his tracker bots (the ‘bunnies’) to do an updated plan of the bowels of the ship that they would compare with the blueprints, and with that they would be able to start their diagnostics. On his way out, Isaac caught a glimpse of Hayden having a conversation with Liam. He was not one to eavesdrop, but he clearly saw Hayden’s wishful eyes as she talked to Liam, who did not seem to notice. He did not seem to be doing it on purpose either, and that again rang far too many bells in Isaac’s head for his liking. Surely he had not been like that?

“Hayden?” he cleared his throat. “Shall we?”

“You’ve fixed it,” she deadpanned, not believing it for a second. Isaac just grinned.

“No. But it’s something bad, and it’s going to take a while.”

“Oh, Isaac!” Scott walked towards him from a corridor to his left. He had not seen him coming, and now Scott was again too close to him. The problem was that now he minded that he was. “Is it bad?”

Scott looked worried. His ship was his livelihood and his crew was his family. If anything went wrong or they got stranded, or they could not deliver, there might be dire consequences. Isaac wished he could give Scott a hug and comfort him, and promise that he would fix it… but Isaac pushed that thought away, alongside all the feelings that he had accumulated for Scott.

Isaac took a couple more seconds to answer as he thought what he had to say, rather than what he wanted to yell and cry about. He also took a tiny step away from Scott, but he hit the wall of the corridor. Was the ship getting smaller? Isaac struggled to breathe.

“I’ll do my best to sort it out soon.”

And he forced a smile. He really wanted to smile, but it was not sincere, because he did not feel like smiling around Scott. Not anymore. He just wanted to get out.

Scott might have recognised something in Isaac’s eyes, but the engineer spoke before the captain could say anything.

“I’ve got the plans, so I’ll get on it immediately.”

Without waiting for Hayden or for Scott to say anything else, Isaac stormed out of the _Melissa_ , clenching his fists and willing himself not to vomit until he got back to his cabin.

**~ * ~**

Having met Allison and seeing Scott disappointed in him (and, only perhaps, having met Brett) only confirmed to Isaac that he was better off hiding in the workshop and avoiding all interactions with the _Melissa_ or her crew. Considering that he was trying to fix her, this was going to be difficult. For the first couple of days he stayed in the workshop, but eventually he decided to stay in his cabin and avoid the outside world. This also implied cutting all interactions with almost everyone else, but his friends would understand, and in any case, Isaac just needed some Isaac time.

For the next week, Isaac studied every inch of the _Melissa_ ’s plan, but he was only applying half of his brain, as the other half was too focused on Scott and Allison and all the things he could have done in the past. That time two years ago when the _Melissa_ had just arrived from Neptune and Scott had just sat outside his ship, silently people watching, for instance. That would have been a perfect chance. Or a couple of months later when they were about to leave for a long-haul to Jupiter. Scott had just finished lunch with Stiles and Lydia when Isaac had just entered the canteen. Isaac had sat down on his own, and Scott came by to see how he was doing. That had been a great day that he remembered fondly.

But all those days were gone now. Scott and Allison, and Allison and Scott. _Space!_ In his mind they were every moment together, and they were happy, because he had seen them happy, and they were the kind of people who deserved to be happy. And Scott had not ever really liked him the way he had liked Scott. Isaac had wasted all this time imagining a make-believe lie. Because Scott would never even care about Isaac, because he was a nobody. Scott would never consider going out with Isaac because he was a dumb and uneducated mechanic of the last corner of the universe. In fact, it was not that Isaac had set his bar way beyond his level with Scott (which he nevertheless had), the inevitable truth was that nobody would care for Isaac in that way. _And he fucking deserved it_.

An alarm beeped on the wall, and Isaac checked the time. 17 standard. This had been the first day in almost ten that he had left his cabin to go to the workshop, and the day had flown by because it was time to go home. Isaac scurried away, again trying to avoid all places where Scott or Allison might be, until he reached the more quiet corridors of the ring going towards Block A. He got to his cabin and opened the door, only to find that there were four people in his pod.

“How did you get in?” he asked when he saw Erica, Braeden, Boyd and Derek standing up in front of him.

“I’m the Station Commander,” Derek smiled without mirth. “Please, Isaac. Sit down.”

They had arranged for him to sit on his chair, while they stood in front.

“You know it’s not my birthday, right? And even if it were, this is the lamest surprise party in the galaxy.”

“Isaac, you need to stop moping about Scott,” Derek went to the point. Braeden slapped his shoulder. “You’ve been like this for almost two weeks.”

“Has Mason told you to do this?” was his first reaction. They all shook their heads.

“We are worried about you,” the commander’s wife said. “You have been avoiding everyone, and not just Captain McCall.”

“I’ve been busy…”

“You’ve busied yourself in your workshop and been hiding here, not doing your real job,” Derek insisted. Now it was Erica and Boyd’s turn to glare at him.

“Maybe I have been too busy with other stuff…” Isaac tried to divert the point.

“Avoidance of duty is liable behaviour, Isaac,” the commander pointed out. He rose a finger to silence Erica before she objected.

“Is it now?” Isaac leant forward.

“Yes, and you know it.”

“Then I’ll quit.”

“You cannot quit. You’re an enlisted Kuiper Ranger,” Derek pointed out, close to losing his patience.

“Fine, then I’ll _desert_ ,” he rolled his eyes.

“You’ll be court-martialled! Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Enough you two!” Braeden stood from the bed and forced Derek to step back. “This whole thing is not because of station stuff,” she underlined. “This is because all of us are worried, because we love you.”

That earned her an eye roll from Isaac. Who could possibly love him? Not his brother. Not his dad. Not Scott, definitely. Nobody at all, most likely.

“Darling, you need to stop torturing yourself like this,” Erica tried a more sympathetic approach. “You’ve hidden in your workshop and hardly eaten a thing.”

“I’ve been eating,” Isaac pointed with his chin at the pile of take-away canteen boxes that littered a corner of his pod. Not all of them were actually empty, though. Erica did not find that funny.

“I haven’t seen you once do anything but work or run to hide these days,” Boyd pointed out. “You haven’t been to the OBs and you haven’t been down to hydroponics.”

“You don’t understand…” Isaac huffed as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“You mean we are blind and we haven’t seen how you feel miserable because Scott is with that pilot now? That you are torturing yourself about what you could have done?”

“I wasn’t ready!” Isaac lashed. He had gone red now. “I wish I had been, but I wasn’t! I couldn’t believe anyone would care for me like he did, and when I finally was ready to let him know, then that… _bitch_ turned up.”

“We care about you,” Isaac was surprised by Derek voicing actual emotions. “You know that, right?”

“That’s why we’re here,” Erica added. “Because it hurts us seeing you like this.”

“Why don’t you go and tell Hayden then to stop daydreaming about Liam?” the engineer jabbed. “You could stop her before she goes too far and spare her from this misery.”

“Wow, you’re a poet now,” Erica teased. Isaac looked for something to throw at her, but Boyd with just one look told him to stop.

“Is this all you take from this?” Boyd circled his hand, to indicate the four of them. “That we came here to tell you that this was going to happen? We’re here because we know you don’t deserve to be like this.” There was a silence after Boyd’s words. He was never this vocal about anything, and perhaps because of that Isaac was far more surprised.

“Maybe I do…”

“Listen, Isaac,” Braeden stepped forward, coming closer to the engineer. “We’ve all been where you are now. We all have in our past a Scott McCall who hurt us. Even Derek...” she added as an afterthought with a smirk.

Isaac shot a quick glance at his friend, and saw that, for all his stoic and serious façade, Commander Hale would not deny that allegation.

“That doesn’t help me,” Isaac argued after a long silent pause, but he had lost his initial fire.

“You know that you can count on us for anything, right?” Erica smiled.

He knew he could, but they did not understand that there were things that he had to face on his own. Isaac hung his head and sighed. Erica took this as his way of conveying that they had got to him, so she stood up and pulled a chair to sit next to her friend. They sat there in silence for a few seconds, until Isaac sighed. Then she threw her arms around him and Isaac did not flinch or back off, so everybody sighed in relief.

“You are such an annoying handful of friends, you know?” Isaac huffed. “Can I at least have ten minutes on my own to have a shower?”

“You must,” Derek suddenly seemed more cheerful. “You’re coming to have dinner with us tonight. We’ll talk about Earth, as promised?”

Isaac was forced to smile, and he nodded. He hushed everyone out of his pod, but they only left when he reassured them that he would not be a miserable asteroid anymore. He still had a smile on his face when Boyd left and the door of his cabin slid shut, but then he was all alone in his cabin. Isaac dragged his feet to the hygiene pod. He threw his clothes off and stepped in and turned the water on. Isaac rested his forehead on the shiny plastic wall and let the water wash him down as he got lost in thought, bitterness, loneliness, and anger.

**~ * ~**

Next morning, Isaac made the effort to have breakfast in the canteen, where Erica was already waiting for him with a massive bowl of porridge.

“Your favourite,” she said with a grin.

“You know I only came here today because I missed having my bowl of Beacon H’s finest goo,” he smirked, making her roll her eyes. For all his complaints about breakfast, the canteen offered a lot more, but he actually enjoyed the porridge. “That little charade of yours yesterday has nothing to do with my being here.”

“I know,” Erica nodded emphatically.

A big surprise that morning was to see Mr and Mrs Hewitt coming to have early breakfast in the canteen. Both of his foster parents had band III jobs, which meant that they started work an hour later (a system designed to avoid overcrowding the canteen at meal times), so Isaac suspected that Mason had something to do with all this.

“Hi, Leonor. Hi, Jeff,” Isaac could not call them mum or dad. They had never asked him either. “Bit early for you, ain’t it?”

“Don’t give us that attitude, young man,” Leonor smiled as she sat next to Isaac while her husband went to grab them some food. “It’s bad enough you skipped lunch with us last weekend,” Isaac still had lunch once a week with the Hewitts, “and we have to find through Mason about all this thing with that ship’s captain?”

Isaac held his spoon too firmly and set his jaw. He would murder Mason whenever he was back in Beacon H.

“I’d rather not talk about that.”

“Tough luck, mister. Just point him at me and I’ll have words…”

Isaac had to chuckle. Mrs Hewitt had been (and still was) the best foster mother he could have asked for. Perhaps in some other universe he might have met Scott under different circumstances, and met his mother which was bound to be an amazing woman, and his brother would not have disappeared in space, and they would have all been happy living on Earth, but that was all a dream – and one that would not come true. Ever.

“I’m getting there, don’t worry. No need for that…” Isaac admitted.

Jeff came back with his and his wife’s food, and they all sat down to have breakfast together. Of course, the Hewitts knew Erica from the _Talia_ , but the Reyes and the Hewitts had been friends already in the Jovian system, which is why they had emigrated together. They had quite a nice breakfast, even if Isaac listened more than contributed to the conversation, which revolved mostly around station gossip, who was pregnant, who had lost all their credits to gambling, and the weird new miners that had been recently working in the outermost orbital drills.

They were deep in a discussion about station politics when the crew of the _Melissa_ walked in all together. Isaac stopped to stare as they walked in and headed towards the nearest empty table. Erica and Mr Hewitt were narrating an elaborated story and gesticulating emphatically while Mrs Hewitt rolled her eyes, but Isaac immediately disconnected.

Lydia and Stiles walked in first; he was still wearing those ridiculous headphones, talking non-stop while she walked in silence. The redhead caught Isaac’s eye, and her face changed for the tiniest fraction of a second, as if she wanted to apologise or, rather, as if she regretted not having warned Isaac in advance. Of course, now everything made sense, but it still did not help him.

Next came Liam and Scott, both browsing through their buzzers and talking to each other about whatever they were looking at on their screens. They were too busy with that to even register that Isaac was looking at them. This was the first time Isaac had seen Scott in days; days full of overthinking and avoiding, and long-distance coms with Mason and even one intervention. Looking at Scott still _hurt_ , but it felt somehow different now. He might not be ready to let go, but at least now he had admitted that he had to. He just needed time. Hopefully.

Malia walked in next, deep in conversation with Allison. Naturally, seeing Allison was a permanent reminder that he could not have Scott and that he should move on for his own sake and for his friends’ sanity, but it would force him to move on. The fact that Isaac had planned already to grab a bucket of bilge water and keep moss in it just in case Allison decided one day to walk into his workshop had nothing to do with anything.

Last, and walking on his own, came Brett. He walked in with his hands in his pockets and a small smile on his face, lost in thought and just observing the people of Beacon H. It might have been the canteen light, but he seemed different. Isaac did not know how, no matter how intently he looked, because the hair seemed the same. His eyes were still an incredible shade of blue, almost the hue he remembered Uranus to be. Perhaps it was his posture? It was most likely his clothes. He was not in his greasy kit; he was wearing a blindingly-white shirt which had the buttons on the left side of the chest in the Jovian way, and his sleeves rolled up. The shirt was not as tight-fitting as his boiler suit, but that did not stop Isaac from noticing his hinted muscles. There must have been something different with the trousers too.

“Isaac,” Erica elbowed him when she noticed the _Melissa_ crew had just marched in. “Are you okay?” She sounded concerned. Maybe he had been staring at them too intently.

“Yeah, yeah…” he dismissed quickly.

“Are you sure?”

And just before he turned around to look at his friend, Isaac caught Brett’s eye, and he noticed him. He gave him again the tiniest of smiles, but it was enough acknowledgement for him. Isaac still had a plan to stay away from space captains and blue-eyed mechanics from the _Melissa_ , but for the first time in days, he could sincerely answer Erica’s question.

“Yeah. I think I am. I’m getting there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Urgh!! My poor Isaac. He has it bad...
> 
> Anyhow, it took five chapters and some 30k words, but we finally have Brett (wickwackity, hope you're glad)! Next chapter will introduce the last key character (naming no Raekens) and then the very long introduction to this weird AU of mine will be done!


	6. UTSS Chimera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve got to get going,” Isaac said, definitely not looking at Brett while he rolled up his computer and put his tools away. “There is another ship that needs me.”  
> “You’re leaving me for another, are you?” Brett teased and Isaac felt his ears flare red. 
> 
> OR: Isaac goes back to the Melissa to work side by side with Brett, but he is interrupted by the arrival of a new cargo ship

“Morning everyone,” Hayden said as she opened the meeting room for the daily briefing of the Colony Steering Committee. “Come in, everyone. That includes _you_ , Greenberg. Okay, are we all here?” the administrator checked around, noticing that Isaac was there for a change, but other than a self-congratulatory nod she did not say anything. “So, today’s business…”

Hayden proceeded to explain the main items of the day. The air purifiers in Block B seemed to be holding, and Greenberg had been spraying herbicides to keep the lichens at bay. Hayden pointed out that Erica had failed to visit the orbital stations, but the planetologist simply replied that there were other issues that needed her attention on the station – which made Isaac blush and clench his fists. Before the two entered a yelling contest (neither was known for backing off an argument), Derek intervened siding with Hayden, ordering Erica to go out to the tholin mining stations she was meant to have visited two weeks before.

With that settled, the administrator went on her war path and explained in no-nonsense terms that Isaac had to go to the _Melissa_ to help with the repairs. Isaac nodded, having accepted that he had postponed this for too long.

“One of the trolleys is finally coming over,” Hayden said, looking at Isaac, who was busy twirling a loose bolt in his hand.

“Which one is it?” Braeden asked out of curiosity. There were not that many cargo vessels, and they were always coming to Beacon H, so most of them knew the crews.

“Erm… this is the _UTSS Chimera_ ,” the administrator confirmed looking down at her datapad.

“That’s a new one,” Isaac pointed out, speaking up for the first time since breakfast.

“Seems like,” Hayden kept checking her logs. “It’s still registered as an Ultima Thule ship. I think that the Council bought a couple of second-hand vessels from Pluto.”

“Oh, great,” Isaac rolled his eyes. “More floating, half-broken rubbish.”

“Seems we’re going to be busy,” Boyd smirked, to which Isaac groaned.

“Okay, children, that was all for the day. Off you go,” Hayden dismissed everyone. “Derek, can I have a quick word?”

Isaac spun on his chair and clamped a hand on Derek’s shoulder before leaning down and whispering: “Don’t bite her.”

The commander simply huffed and Isaac walked off after Boyd, who was already out.

“Isaac, wait!” Braeden called for him as they all left the room, leaving the two leading figures of the station having a private conversation. Boyd and Greenberg waved goodbye as they walked off to the workshop. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

“Okay?” the engineer arched a suspicious eyebrow, but let the security officer link her arm with his so there was little else he could do. “What’s happening?”

“Oh, nothing really,” she gave him a mysterious smile. “Just letting you know that Commander Grumpypants has sent in an application to the Terran Council for a visiting permit.”

“He has?” Isaac had not expected Derek to do it so quickly.

“Yes, we were working on that after dinner. And I’ve written you a reference highlighting your impeccable service sheet.”

“Impeccable?” Isaac frowned. “And you wrote me a reference?”

“Even _more_ impeccable than how Derek had left it,” she waved lightly. “And, of course, I wrote you a reference. Derek was also going to ask Mrs Hewitt, and you can guess what a glowing reference that will be.”

“So no trace of drunk and disorderly with a side of brawling?” Isaac insisted on his service sheet. “Or last week’s absence without leave?”

“What absence without leave?” Braeden grinned.

“You’ve… You’ve deleted things from my record?” Isaac went tense as he whispered his question.

“Change, delete, re-write… such ugly words. No, no, no…. Relax, Isaac,” Braeden shook her head with a smile as she patted the engineer’s hand. “Let’s just say that in Beacon H we look after each other and that some minor hiccups have been suitably dissimulated. And this side of Pluto Derek is the law, so—”

“Wait, wait,” Isaac stopped and pulled away from Braeden, trying to get his head around what the frigging Station Commander and the Security Officer were doing for _him_. “All of this for my application? Am I really going to Earth?”

“I did not say that, but we are really doing our best to put forward a winning application. And Derek is pulling all his strings with his family back on Terra.”

Isaac felt lightheaded for a second. _He was going to Earth? To the see the ‘cool, green hills of Earth’? The Home Planet?_

“You’re welcome,” she said after a couple of silent seconds.

“Thank you?” he mumbled with a big smile, and brought her into an unexpected hug.

“Yeah, well… thank Derek. We all care about you, you know, but he especially,” Braden gave him a smile as she fixed his blue and gold scarf. “I better be off, though,” she said as she walked back and headed towards the Security Block. “I’ll catch you later to inspect this new trolley?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” it was always standard procedure for the engineer to check incoming ships with the security officer, although with regular ships and known crews (like Scott’s) this was a requirement that Braeden usually overlooked. “I’ll be on the _Melissa_ if you need me!”

“You can do this, Isaac,” she said without looking back and without any further explanation, but Isaac knew exactly what she meant.

 _To Earth? Him!_ Isaac had to stop himself from extending his arms in victory.

Even to that day, the engineer was not sure if he understood why all these people with lives of their own and not related to him cared so much about him. They kept doing stuff like this even if they did not have to, and it was more puzzling still because he had done nothing to deserve this special attention. But it was nice nonetheless.

**~ * ~**

Half an hour later, Isaac was already on his way towards the _Melissa_ with his toolbox, his gel computer, and a holoprojector with the blueprints updated with Boyd’s scanning ‘bunnies’. He stood in front of the open airlock for a second; he took a deep breath and scratched the back of his head, trying to delay the inevitable. Then, with a sigh, he walked in.

The _Melissa_ seemed empty, so Isaac logged himself in for the record. Hopefully, he would not bump into anyone (and by anyone he really meant Scott and that Man-Snatcher pilot) and they would let him work alone and at his own pace.

 _You can do it, Lahey_ , he told himself as he walked down the corridors. _You understand what you feel for Scott, and you know it can’t be. And you have to move on, because you’re good at your job, and you’re an engineer, and you’re going to Earth._ It was not the soundest logic, but it was all his brain managed to say.

As Isaac repeated this to himself, he missed someone walking behind him.

“Hey.”

The engineer almost jumped off his skin, but he managed to turn around only to see Malia smiling.

“You effing asteroid, you scared me shitless!”

“You’re the one sneaking around my ship,” Malia said in a tone which clearly implied that she did not care.

“I’m not _sneaking_. I came to work.”

“Oh, finally!” she said as she rolled her eyes and threw her hands in the air. “About time. I couldn’t take this chatting and yapping anymore.”

“Chatting? What chatting? Who’s saying what?” Isaac scrunched his face as Malia walked ahead, taking him to the control panels he was meant to be working on.

“Oh, nothing, Isaac. Just forget about it.”

“Was it Scott?” Isaac said with fear in his voice. He could try to convince himself otherwise, but he still wanted to know what Scott thought about him.

“Lydia was just wondering what was taking so long,” Malia went on as she took a turn, clearly ignoring her own words about ‘forgetting about it’. “I mean, Stiles was being his usual self, but we’re worried because we’re on a tight schedule, you know?”

A part of Isaac felt guilty when he heard this, but he did not comment.

“There is nothing we can do anyways,” Malia continued as she ducked under one of the low pipes of that service corridor. “It’s not your fault that the cargo ships are stupidly delayed. That’s what Scott said.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. He knows you’ll find out what’s wrong and fix it in time. He trusts you like that.”

Something inside Isaac’s chest felt both warm and painful when he heard this.

“Well, here we are,” the Martian said with finality as she pointed. “Take care of our ship, Lahey. Also, I know it’s hard, and it’s not what you want to hear now, but Scott is not the only guy in the galaxy.”

Isaac nodded silently as Malia waved him goodbye and disappeared back into the bowels of her ship. The engineer slowly knelt down and sat on the plastic floor of the service corridor, taking his tools carefully out of his box and unrolling his computer, which glowed green and blue as it warmed up. Malia was right, he knew. It was hard, and Scott was not the only guy ever for him. But it was _so_ difficult, and it was still so painful… The fact that the pool of available guys in Beacon H was basically a puddle where he had explored all the murky possibilities ( _thanks, but no, Gabe, you creepy prick_ ) did not help either. But Isaac was going to be professional, and he was going to be mature, and focused on his job. He cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes before turning on the holoprojector.

For a long while, Isaac tinkered with various cables and pipes that his holoprojector was highlighting, but it soon became obvious that the blueprints were completely useless. Boyd’s robots had already identified a few differences, but the scan of the shafts could only identify modifications because they assumed that what they were scanning corresponded to the plans. In reality, the holoplans he had been given were a complete fiction: the blueprints might represent how the _Melissa_ was meant to be, but it was annoyingly evident that the shipyard had lacked all the components and most of the ship comprised recycled and repurposed elements of older ships. Isaac was not surprised at all, because that seemed standard practice with the latest ships, but it still meant that his job was going to be far more difficult.

The first thing he needed to do was to yank open more panels in order to locate the connections between the steering mechanism and the main electronic components. So he put his usual omnitool down and pulled his trusty and ever-so-helpful crowbar, and proceeded to dismantle the corridor’s panels.

“Hi, Liam,” Isaac froze when he heard Hayden’s voice. He turned around, but saw nobody. Only after she spoke again did he realise that their voices were echoing through the ducts, and that they were probably up on the main deck.

“Hey, Hayden. How are you doing?” Liam’s voice echoed. “Are you looking for Scott? Because he is not here…”

“Oh, no, I’m not… I just came to see you… _Well_ , I mean, yeah, I’m not bad. Busy as always… Are you busy?”

“Not really. I was about to go to the exercise rooms.”

“Oh, maybe I can walk you there?”

“Erm… Don’t worry, I know where they are, Hayden,” Liam said in a confused tone. Isaac bit his lip and shook his head in embarrassment. _This is painful to listen to_. “I’ve been on this station before?”

“I know,” Hayden’s voice was bubbly, which contrasted badly with Liam’s polite but neutral tone. “But we can have a chat as we walk. I’m on my way there anyway, and I wanted to tell you about the new menu in the canteen…”

“Trust me, this ship is not as hollow as it seems,” a voice said behind Isaac. And this time there was someone there. Startled, the Uranian dropped his crowbar with a loud bang. “Hey there, Isaac,” Brett said with his hint of a smile.

“What is wrong with the crew on this ship and sneaking up behind me?” Isaac growled as he bent over to pick up his bar.

“Malia told me you finally came to work,” the ship’s mechanic dropped his own kit and rolled up the sleeves of his boiler suit. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m _fine,_ ” Isaac huffed. “It’s just that there was a problem with the plans.”

Brett looked at Isaac, clearly not believing him (and Isaac knew Brett knew, because he was the worst liar this side of the Moon), but the mechanic did not call him out on that. Isaac was silently thankful.

“I had the suspicion that the plans were not going to be accurate,” Brett took one step closer, almost brushing Isaac’s shoulder, in order to have a look at the holoprojection. Isaac, however, pushed back a little. “But it’s good to have a hunch confirmed by an expert.”

“Yeah, well; ‘not accurate’ would be putting it mildly. You see these pulsating orange points?” Isaac pointed at a dozen markers highlighted in the projection. Brett simply nodded. “Those are modifications that the bots identified based on what was meant to be there. Probably those are the only things on these plans that are actually _there_. Now,” Isaac pushed the projector out of the way in order to walk to the wall of pipes. Brett gallantly stepped to the side, and Isaac grinned. “You see these pipes and you see that blueprint? They are completely unrelated.”

“So those are not the blueprints for the _Melissa_.”

“They are alright! I’m sure they were meant to be,” Isaac shook his head. “Originally. But this was never built accordingly.”

“So, what do we need to do?” Brett asked and his brow arched up.

Isaac paused for a second with his hands on his hips and biting his lip. He looked at the wall of pipes that hid behind the service corridor panels, then he turned to look at the holoplan, and then to look at Brett, who waited patiently with his hands in his pockets and an innocent grin.

“I haven’t got a clue. But a lot.”

**~ * ~**

“So where are you from?” Isaac asked after a silent while.

For the past hour and a half, Isaac and Brett had all but dismantled that part of the _Melissa_ section by section. Currently they were in the service corridor trying to see what the hydraulic compressors that steered the side thrusters connected to. To his credit, Brett had kept all his talk on the job at hand, which was a nice change considering that everyone else on Beacon H wanted to talk to him about Scott. Such was the novelty that Isaac, who had been ready to glare and brood, was completely taken by surprise. In fact, he found himself trying to ignore the way Brett’s eyes opened whenever he asked him something, or how he always said a soft ‘thank you’ with a smile when he handed him a tool. Deciding that he needed a _no-no_ policy when it came to tall, blue-eyed mechanics was all good and fine, but Isaac was not sure why he was lacking the strength to enforce it.

“Where do you think I am from?” Brett answered with another question and a sly smirk while he connected a pipe to his gel computer.

From the floor, looking down a hatch with a torchlight, Isaac mulled his answer. “Well, I’d assume you are from the inner planets, like the rest of your crew. But you sound slightly different. Definitely not a Rocker.”

“Yep. And you’re an Icer from Uranus because you _really_ sound like you’re from there.”

Isaac had to stop and think if Brett meant anything else by that, but the mechanic had never given him that vibe. Brett did not seem like the kind of person to do that. Maybe Isaac could trust his gut instinct this one time and let it pass as an innocent comment.

“I have family from Saturn,” he decidedly did not mention his father. “But you have that twang of the Jovians.”

“Hmphhhh… close,” Brett really smirked now. Isaac pulled himself out of the hatch to have a better look.

“How close?”

“Like… 2 AUs closer,” Brett looked down at Isaac. “Depending on the season.”

“You innerds and your seasons…” Isaac understood the idea of ‘seasons’, but they were a very foreign concept for the settlers of the outer planets. Each ‘season’ on Uranus lasted 22 years. On Beacon H they did not even bother counting. “Oh, I know! You are a Belter?”

“Yep,” and there it was: an honest and proper smile on Brett’s face. And it was not just his mouth; it was his eyes, his cheeks, and his whole posture. He was really beaming at him. Isaac suddenly realised that he desperately needed more of that in his life, because he found himself beaming back. “I’m from Ceres.”

And as quick as it came, Isaac’s smile faded.

“Did you come across any Uranians in Ceres?” he asked with cautious nonchalance.

“No, not really,” Brett replied slowly, sensing there was something else to that question. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing…” Isaac turned around to look down the hatch again. “Tell me if your indicator flashes when I connect this here.”

Brett took a couple of seconds to reply, but Isaac did not dare look up, because he knew that Brett would be wanting to know more about that, and he was not in the mood to talk about Camden.

“No… not yet. Try another.”

Isaac retreated back to his quiet and all-professional self, focusing on the job, not letting any thoughts about Ceres or Camden come through. They spent a good extra hour like that until it was lunch time, and Brett went off to the _Melissa’s_ kitchen and brought back two plates of ham-and-veg paste with two bread rolls and two cartons of juice.

“Is this what they feed you on Ceres?” Isaac said as he munched on the processed meat, relaxing back to a more conversational tone. “We had something on Oberon that was similar, but we dared not call it ham. We did not even call it pork.”

“What was it then?”

“Mars meat,” Isaac said as he eyed the thick slices of meat and veg all-in-one and took another bite. “The beef flavoured one was Earth Meat. Venus meat was your generic cricket mash…”

“We do get real pigs on Mars,” Brett nodded. “I’ve seen them farmed, and have eaten them.”

“There’s probably more pork in this paste than we ever got when I was back on Oberon…”

“How’s Oberon like?” Brett asked as he chewed. “I’ve never been to Uranus.”

Again, Isaac found himself trying to guess if Brett was asking because he knew something, or if he was trying to pry something out of him, but he seemed genuinely curious. He chewed his food slowly before answering.

“It’s definitely different. The light that reflected off the planet was a soft blue. I kind of miss it? It was a pretty sight. Oberon itself was no different from any other moon, I guess,” Isaac looked down at his plate as he dipped his bread in the leftover sauce. “I went to the Saturn System once, and that was really different.”

“You bet! Those rings are something else.”

“I know… I bet you’ve seen them? I mean we had rings around Uranus, but ours were… _tiny_ , and pink,” Isaac’s eyes gleamed as he remembered happier memories from his childhood. “They were nothing like the rainbow rings of Saturn.”

“Rainbow rings?” Brett looked puzzled. “That’s a very poetic way of putting it.”

“Yeah, don’t you know the song?” Brett shook his head, and Isaac smiled a little before singing a few verses. “ _From the bright harsh soils of Luna, to Saturn’s rainbow rings; in the hearts of lonely spacemen, is a longing voice that sings_ …”

“That’s a beautiful song,” Brett said when Isaac went melancholically quiet, sensing that there was something else to that tune.

“My mum taught me it,” Isaac spat, suddenly regretting sharing his vulnerable memories with a complete stranger.

But to Isaac’s surprise, Brett did not pry or ask anything else. Normally, when people found about his family, they would ask about his mother or his brother, and they wanted to know what happened to them; and they would say useless things like they were sorry (which was a lie) or that it was a horrible thing to happen to such a small kid (which was an idiotic obvious observation). Brett was different. The blond mechanic remained silent finishing his meal, giving him space, and letting him decide how to continue with that conversation.

“It’s a very long song. It’s called _The Green Hills of Earth_ ,” Isaac eventually spoke. “It’s also very old. Like, from the early days of space travel old.”

“What else does it sing about?”

Isaac looked up from his plate. Brett was giving him again a small, side smile with an honest face, clearly showing that he was listening and that he was, in fact, interested in what Isaac had to say, which was all very new and made him feel weird things inside that he should most definitely not be feeling.

“Mostly stuff that they imagined. It mentions the moulds and jungles of Venus. Can you imagine? The bit about the snows on Titan is not that off, though… but each verse finishes with a couple of lines about returning to Earth,” he explained before humming: “ _Let’s return back through the darkness, to the cool green hills of Earth_.”

“I want to go to Earth,” Brett said unprompted. “Always wanted to. Since I was little.”

“You’re joking? Me too! I just put in an application,” Isaac admitted, suddenly very conscious that he was slightly blushing that he was not the only dork that really wanted to visit Earth. “So, fingers crossed...”

“Oh, that’d be so cool, man! I’m jealous!”

“I’ve applied before,” Isaac said, “but I’ve never got through.”

“I’ve never had a chance,” Brett said with mock jealousy. “Before I worked on the _Melissa_ I was in different workshops across the belt. Sometimes I went to the stations of Jupiter and I was a couple of years on Mars, but I’ve never been one to stay in one place.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Brett simply shrugged and leant over to take Isaac’s plate. “You’re lucky you’ve got this cosy job on a nice station.”

Isaac had never thought that working in the furthest corner of the inhabited universe was cosy, but he was doing a job he liked on a small station he had helped build himself. It was all about perspective, really…

“They are always looking for new recruits for the Kuiper Rangers, if you get tired of the _Melissa_ ,” Isaac blurted, clearly without any sort of filter, because why in space would he even suggest that?

"I’ll keep that in mind,” Brett gave his mysterious answer after a second’s pause. “Let’s see if we can fix the _Melissa_ first, though? Because if we don’t, I may not have other options. Problem is nobody would hire a mechanic who can’t fix things.”

“You clearly haven’t met Greenberg…”

Brett took their plates away whilst Isaac had a very serious talk with himself about the no-mechanic Plan and about not letting random strangers ask him personal questions, although he had to admit to himself that Brett did not feel that much of a stranger. In fact, there seemed to be a yet-undefined but apparently Brett-shaped feeling inside him about which Isaac’s rational self did not know what to do.

Thankfully, after lunch the two of them managed to focus back on their job (even if at that point it implied mostly banging pipes with a wrench to see which one was which). Eventually, Isaac’s buzzer went off with a message from Braeden. It was nearly 15 standard.

“I’ve got to get going,” Isaac said, definitely not looking at Brett while he rolled up his computer and put his tools away. “There is another ship that needs me.”

“You’re leaving me for another, are you?” Brett teased and Isaac felt his ears flare red. But Isaac had a plan. No mechanics, especially from the _Melissa_. _Stick to that, Lahey!_

“They- I- I mean… it’s just another job,” Isaac slammed his toolbox shut and stood up, still avoiding eye contact. “I’ll be coming back and we can continue tomorrow?”

Again, Brett stepped to the side to let Isaac walk by.

“Of course,” he side-smiled as he moved out of Isaac’s way, letting the engineer pass. “I’ll be waiting.”

**~ * ~**

“What have we got here?” Isaac asked once he reached one of the other Oortside docks where the new incoming ship was being connected.

“Well, this is the _UTSS Chimera_ ,” Braeden read from the datapad. Beside her were two of her burly Peacekeepers with holstered stunners looking bored. “Usually stationed in Canaan,” Isaac whistled when he heard that, because they had not had a visitor from Canaan in years. Rumour was that the station had disappeared. “Cargo: one seventy-five standard units of unrefined tholins which need to be compressed before loading on the _Melissa_ , apparently.”

“Why on Earth did they not compress them?”

Tholins were a mixture of essential gases that on the outer planets were volatile, but that in the Kuiper belt were solids that could be mined. However, before they could be taken to the large processing plants of Neptune and Europa they needed to be compressed into canisters.

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Erica.”

“I’ll ask _them_ ,” Isaac pointed at the hatch of the _Chimera_. “I just hope there isn’t anything wrong in the stations. I’d rather not be sent out there to fix them.”

If there was something Isaac really abhorred, it was working outdoors in those mining stations. The stations themselves could be crammed, but walking in a constraining outsuit surrounded by the vastness of empty space triggered unpleasant memories of the ice mine on Oberon.

“Hopefully that won’t be necessary—”

Their conversation was cut short by the beeping noise of the airlock. Isaac and Braeden walked up and waited for the hatch to open. When the door slid open, a crew of three stood there waiting.

“Welcome to Beacon H. I am First Lieutenant Braeden Hale, and I am the security officer of this station,” she introduced herself formally. “This is Isaac Lahey, KB Engineer 1st class. We will be inspecting your ship before you’re allowed to disembark. This is just our usual routine. Standard procedure,” she concluded with a smile.

The first thing Isaac noticed of the captain were his broad shoulders. The captain was a good half-foot shorter than he was, with a slight stubble on his tan skin, grey eyes, and light brown hair. Definitely attractive. Maybe something good might come out of this. He really needed a distraction from all his accumulating _Melissa_ drama. But then he heard him speak.

“Of course,” the captain grinned. “Please let us know if we can be of any assistance.”

 _Oh, crap_ , Isaac thought. _Ringtards_.

Isaac liked to believe that he had a well-trained ear when it came to identifying accents, but this time he did not had to try very hard. The captain sounded so much like his dad that he shivered. Handsome face or not, the engineer was completely put off by that, although it soon became evident that, no matter what, he was going to dislike this man.

“I am Captain Theo Raeken, and these are Chief Petty Officer Tracy Stewart and Shipman Josh Díaz,” the captain introduced and the crew waved.

“Fairly small crew for such a large ship,” Isaac pointed out.

“We were just ferrying our cargo, there was no need for more personnel,” Theo explained with a smile, and Isaac had to fight the urge to roll his eyes. _Seriously, that accent… And he is trying too hard_.

“We’ll have a look first,” Braeden added, more to the point. “If you would please wait here with these two constables? We’ll be back in a minute.”

“Of course,” Theo replied. “Whatever you need.”

Isaac waited until he and Braeden were inside the ship before muttering through his teeth.

“Space, he reminds me of Stiles.”

“How does he remind you of Stiles? He seems nice. I would’ve definitely pinned him as your type…”

Isaac stopped for a second to cock his head and give Braeden his best ‘I’m not impressed at all by your comment’ blank stare, but the security officer had clearly done it on purpose and just walked past him with a smirk.

Before he could object, anyways, they entered the _Chimera_ proper, and Isaac was left speechless. Inside, all the wall panels were pure white and chrome, not off-cream or greying like most other ships. The light was cool, and the air inside smelled strongly of ozone.

“Come on, Isaac,” Braeden called him. “We haven’t got all day.”

“But- but- but this ship is _new_?”

“Great, less work for you.”

“No, but Hayden said she thought it was a second hand?” Isaac insisted

“Well, lucky them they got a brand new one instead.”

Braeden was right. Isaac was elated to see a brand-new ship. It felt like a birthday present. Maybe he could tolerate Theo if he let him tinker more with his ship.

“Stop drooling. We’ve got a job to do.”

The pair walked further into the _Chimera_ , looking for contraband, stowaways and other illicit merchandise. Seeing that the ship was new and in perfect working order, Isaac found that he had little else to do. The cargo decks were unpressurised and outside to keep the tholins solid, and protected from the void only by a mesh to keep the cargo in. As there was nothing out there evidently out of place, Braeden was happy with her inspection. And because Isaac had little to add, the two were happy to walk out and sign all the forms.

“Well, there is nothing I can complain about,” Isaac said as he pulled a blank datapad and filled in his form. “That’s a nice ship you’ve got there.”

“I know, thanks,” Theo said cheerfully. “We’re very lucky to have got this one.”

“That’s an odd design though, with an open roof cargo bay,” Isaac commented as he kept typing.

“Yeah, it’s designed especially for tholin transport around the KB.”

Isaac nodded, clearly impressed, as he finished his report. When he was happy with it, he handed it over to Theo.

“That’s my report. Just need you to sign it.”

“Sure,” Theo smiled and reached forward to get the datapad off Isaac’s hand, but as he did so, his jacket opened and Isaac noticed a small, high-tech, partly glowing device in his inside pocket.

“Is that a new gel computer?” Isaac asked as he pointed with a finger. “Man, where did you get one? I’ve been trying to get my hands on one for ages!”

Theo’s calm and charming poise flickered for the tiniest instant, and Isaac would have almost missed it, had he not been looking at him directly, expecting an answer. The engineer did not know if the captain had been surprised or terrified that Isaac had seen that, but when he spoke, Theo was his usual pleasing and amicable infuriating self.

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” he dismissed quickly. “It’s just some gadget that I got from Uranus, it just…”

Isaac missed the explanation when he heard Uranus. He had never seen anything remotely similar on either Oberon or any of the other colonies of the Uranus system. Uranians were few and formed a very tight inter-colony community, so it would be surprising if the colonists of Titania had created a new gizmo which was not available on Oberon. Of course, there was the fact that he had not been home in almost ten years…

“Come on, Isaac,” Braeden gently tapped his elbow, snapping him back to reality. “We better get going.”

“Oh, yeah sure,” but she was already gone, the two peacekeepers stepping close behind her. “Well, erm… captain.”

“Theo will be just fine,” he smiled as he returned the signed datapad.

“Okay, Theo. I’ve sent you a copy of this, and I’ll keep the original and… well. Do you know where you’re going now?”

“Yes, don’t worry. We’ll find our way around.”

Theo gave him one last wry smile as he walked away and disappeared into the crowds of the Avenue. As Isaac stood there outside the hatch, trying to put his thoughts together about this amazingly new ship and her puzzling captain, the two members of the crew walked by him on their way out, and one of them purposefully bumped his shoulder into him.

“Sorry, man,” the tall and muscular young man with dark hair said unapologetically with the same accent as his captain. His girl sidekick snorted as both followed Theo into Beacon H.

_Yep. I definitely don’t like this crew of dicks._

As they walked away, Isaac heard Josh whistling a tune that Isaac had not heard in many years, and one he really hoped never to hear again. The same tune that his father used to play in the dead of the night, when he thought nobody was listening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is shorter, but at least it gives a first glimpse at Brett interacting with Isaac. And, of course, we have Theo now, so we're all ready to go!
> 
> Despite what Isaac says, Greenberg is actually competent in his job, and works hard. All the animosity he gets is simply because outside work, in social situations, he just tries too hard, and that gets on people's nerves. Also, a 'season' in Beacon H, at the furthest edge of the Kuiper Belt, probably lasts some 350 years.
> 
> Thanks everyone for reading and keeping up with my wild ride of a rarepair fic!!


	7. Pieces that don't fit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain McCall had noticed how Isaac was now much more distant than what he used to be; he noticed how the engineer stood just slightly further than he would have, and how his eyes seemed dimmer and greyer than the deep Neptune-blue he had known. Isaac could almost sense Scott’s questions, but he just thanked that he never asked.
> 
> OR: Isaac is still trying to process how he feels about Scott, and how he feels about Brett.

“So, tell me, how’re things?” Mason asked and his voice echoed through the speakers in Isaac’s cabin while his holographic face glistened in the centre of the pod.

“Urghhhh…”

“That bad still?”

“Say you go to the life support of the observatory and whack the air supply with a hammer,” Isaac suggested from his bed, hiding his face under the pillow, “how long will you hold?”

“Why?” Mason asked with concern.

“Will it be long enough for me to go there and fix it? Or how else could I justify fleeing Beacon H until the _Melissa_ is gone?”

“Isaac…”

Isaac threw the pillow away and sat up. “What can you sabotage that is not deadly but needs me there, like, right now?”

Mason chuckled. “You told me you were better about Scott.”

“I am! Well…” Isaac stood up and, to his credit, tidied the bed and put the pillow back on it. “I can accept that he isn’t, like, going to like me back or anything,” Isaac shrugged his shoulders and waved his hands vaguely before purposefully turning around, lest Mason could read the half-lie on his face, “but it does not help that he’s _there_. Like, all the time. With _her_.”

“The she-wolf?”

“Yeah. The man-snatching Martian tart.”

“Isaac!”

“I can call her that,” he turned around and continued tidying his cabin. “I’ve met her, so I can judge.”

“I think you’re biased.”

“Well, I didn’t ask you, did I?” he said in a tone harsher than intended. Mason’s holographic face turned sour, and Isaac immediately regretted saying that. “Sorry,” he apologised with a sigh.

“Still snappy, I see?”

“I have to see him every single day, Mason,” Isaac said as he stacked his holo collection back on its shelf. “I have to work on his fucking ship. It just hurts whenever I’m there, and then I leave and come home and I get some peace, but he’s just always on my mind. Still…”

“I won’t say ‘I know’, but I can say ‘I imagine’,” Mason offered with a smile. Isaac snorted and nodded. “These things take time.”

“Yeah, but Corey is there with you. That always helps. I’ve got _Greenberg,_ ” Isaac snorted. He was being unfair and he knew it, but despite Erica and Braeden (and Derek and Boyd), there were things he was only ready to talk about with Mason. “How is he, though?” [Corey was Mason's boyfriend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28816707). They met during Beacon H’s official inauguration, and they had been together ever since. Now, while Mason was the Chief Astronomer, Corey was the sub-station controller.

“Corey!” Mason yelled over his shoulder with a grin. “Isaac says hi! He says hi,” he added after a few seconds, making Isaac smile. “What about that other ship? The new one. Mom has told me about it.”

Isaac visibly shivered at the thought of the _Chimera_.

“We don’t mention that ship or her frigging crew in this cabin, Mason,” his tone was glacial.

“ _Whoa_ , okay!” Mason stifled a laugh. Isaac glared at his projection. “Where did that come from? Mom was sure you’d love that thing. Apparently it’s all swanky and new.”

“They’re all dicks,” Isaac deadpanned.

“Oh, okay. Care to elaborate? This is the kind of juicy gossip I don’t get from Mom and Dad.”

“I… They…” Isaac struggled, and Mason’s brow furrowed in concern. “Okay, they’re Ringtards—and before you tell me not to be a judgmental git, they are actually walking dicks.” The engineer opened one of his secret cupboards and pulled out a packet of flapjacks. “All of them.”

“Stars forbid there were any nice Saturnians,” Mason joked. He knew that Isaac’s father had been a Saturnian.

“I mean it, Mason,” Isaac was suddenly serious. He had learnt to deflect any conversations about his family and Oberon with jest and sass, but not this time. “The captain, he… well, yes. He sounds like… like _him_ , but… It’s not that, honestly. He’s not good. He’s full of shit, that much I can tell.”

“You’ve always been an awful judge of character,” Mason tried to keep it light.

“His crew bumped their shoulders into me as they left the ship.”

“Isaac—”

“No, Mason, trust me!” Isaac insisted. His pulse was beating hard in his ears, and the flapjack was now a pile of crumbs on the floor. “Mason, we’re… you’re my…”

“Hey, hey. I know. I’m sorry. I do believe you, Isaac.”

Isaac sighed and crouched down to clean the destroyed biscuit. He knew Mason was his foster brother, but he was not his _real_ brother. That was Cam, even if he had abandoned him, no matter what Derek had told him. And Mason cared about him and loved him, but Isaac could not bring himself to call him by Cam’s title. It felt wrong.

“This week is being shit,” Isaac concluded in a damp tone. “When are you coming back?”

That worried Mason. Isaac was normally snarky and, despite his insecurities, he coped and shrugged most problems off with sass and sarcasm, when not directly with bravado. He only was needy when he was vulnerable, which was not often. Furthermore, the way Isaac was putting up a brave mask meant that he was about to bottle up, and if he did that, Mason knew, it would all explode later in an unexpected direction and would land him in the security cells with a black eye.

“Do you want me to come back?” Mason offered, and Isaac was silent for a few seconds. “I can probably escape in a couple of days and be home for a week,” Mason insisted. “I mean, we’ve found a new iron-rich icy comet coming this way, but that’s not going to arrive any sooner.”

“I’ll be fine…” he lied.

“If you say so,” regardless of what the engineer said, Mason made a mental note to get a week off and go back home as soon as possible. “Did you find out what’s wrong with that ship you needed to fix though?” the astronomer asked knowing that even if it was the _Melissa_ , Isaac liked an engineering challenge and this topic was bound to distract him.

“Oh, well… I- we don’t know,” Isaac’s mind immediately shifted to the new conversation, and his entire body seemed to relax a notch. “We’re basically dismantling her section by section. It’s a big mess.”

“We? You mean you and Greenberg?”

“No. Me and the ship’s mechanic. He’s called Brett.”

Mason immediately noticed how his brother’s posture changed: how he rolled his shoulders, ducked his head, and ever-so-slightly arched an eyebrow as he mentioned the mechanic’s name.

“Oh, is he?”

“Yeah, he’s from Ceres,” the engineer casually added that random bit of information. “He’s actually quite good, but we can’t find what’s wrong with that ship.”

“I’m sure you’ll sort it all out…”

The astronomer bit his lip and smirked.

**~*~**

“Hey, Liam, can I ask you one thing?”

“Uh, yeah sure?”

Isaac had been waiting outside the _Melissa_ for a short while, technically waiting for Boyd to bring him an H12 bot.

“Is Scott on board?” Isaac held his breath.

“No, why? Do you need him?” the shorter man offered with a smile.

“Oh. No, no. That’s fine. I mean, I- could you do me a favour?”

“He’s just in the Learning Block,” Liam pointed at the four-story glass block that stood right in front of them. “He’s looking for something to read. This wait is getting boring…”

“No, no, that’s fine. No need to bother him,” Isaac thanked space for this respite. “I just need him to sign this authorisation for a robotic intervention. Maybe you could…?”

“What?” Liam’s eyes opened wide. “I can’t do that? Paperwork? No, Isaac, sorry, but—”

“What’s that?” Lydia demanded. She came out of nowhere, heading towards the ship.

“He needs Scott to sign this—”

“Only if he could. It’s not urgent,” Isaac flustered. “Well, it is, but I need to wait for the bots, and Scott is not here, so maybe Liam—”

“I’ll sign that,” she said, and Isaac let out a sigh he had not realised he had been holding.

“I didn’t know you could do that?” Liam asked with a puzzled face.

“Well, do you remember that time when there was that thing that you didn’t know whether or not I could do, and then it turned out that I couldn’t, Officer Dunbar?”

“No. Not really…”

“No… nor can I.” With that, she scribbled on the datapad, pressed her thumb, and returned it to Isaac. Liam just stood there dumbfounded. “Coming in, Mr Lahey?”

“Uh… yeah?” Isaac agreed because, as it usually was with Lydia, her questions were polite orders. “Bye, Liam.”

“No need to bother the captain for this, right?” she said with an unexpected friendly smile as the two of them walked into the _Melissa_. Isaac gulped and nodded silently. “We all trust you are doing your best to sort us out. Scott holds you in his highest esteem.”

“I’ll do my best,” the engineer muttered as they took a turn at a corridor intersection, where Lydia stopped.

“Are you okay, Isaac?” she said, turning around to look at the taller blond.

“Yeah?”

“Things don’t always work out as we want them to,” she added with a sad smile. “But Scott really thinks the best of you, and nothing could change that.”

Isaac felt a cold sweat on his forehead and his back. He took a step back.

“Ms Martin, really I- I- I don’t know, but, huh…”

“Mr Lahey,” she sighed and returned to her formal self. “The crew of the _Melissa_ appreciates what you are doing. That includes Captain McCall.”

“I better get going,” Isaac mumbled and walked off towards the service corridor. Whatever Lydia wanted to tell him, he did not want to hear. His communicator buzzed, and he quickly told Boyd to drop the bots in front of the airlock and he would come and get them. By the time he got to the sector where he was working, Brett was already there.

“Morning,” he gave him a smile. Isaac readjusted his scarf and forgot whatever he was going to rant about. “Are you okay?”

“Let’s just get working,” Isaac deflected with resignation as he pulled his sleeves up and searched for his clicker.

“Sure,” the mechanic pushed to the side to let Isaac walk through, but he could not help his eyebrows from arching in worry. “I found the electronics that control the second hydraulic piston.”

Isaac sighed.

“Which one is it?”

The morning flew by. Isaac was glad that Brett had found one of the things they needed to repair. This, of course, was only one in a long list, but the engineer was not sure if he would have coped with a whole morning of failure on top of a morning of unnecessary embarrassment. What was perhaps worse was the way in which Brett seemed to be looking at him. Every time he caught the Ceresian’s eyes, he was biting his lip, and his eyes were worried.

“I’m sorry it’s been a shit morning,” he said when Isaac called it was time for their mid-morning break.

“It’s not your fault…”

Brett closed his eyes and briefly shrugged his shoulders.

“Things suck. We’ve all been there.”

_Yeah, right. Somehow I doubt it,_ Isaac thought, but did not say it aloud. Maybe he did not have with Brett the same confidence he had with Erica, where they could insult each other and yet still be okay. Neither did he have with Brett the camaraderie he shared with Boyd or Derek, who understood him even if they pushed him, and who forgave him when he snapped. Isaac could have blurted something like that and got on with his morning, but in a way Isaac respected Brett, and he did not think it would be fair on the mechanic. Brett worked well, and accepted when Isaac did not talk, and Isaac appreciated that. There was also his soft smile and his expressive eyes (and the broad shoulders), so overall Brett did not deserve Isaac’s disdain. Instead, he apologised.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? Don’t be sorry, bud,” and Brett’s lips curled ever so slightly and his eyes shone, and suddenly Isaac’s morning was not that bad. “Let me get you something from the machine,” and then he winked and was off.

Something inside Isaac’s head shorted, because Brett had winked at him. Last night Isaac had finally decided to embrace and enact his no-no policy on Brett, but nothing was stopping him from having Brett as a friend, right? Just because he had flashing images of himself dragging Brett back to his cabin and ripping his boiler suit off did not mean that Brett thought of him in that way. Maybe he was being simply friendly. Just like Scott… But now he had _winked_ at him.

“There you go,” Brett said when he got back, throwing Isaac a carton. “Fruit juice and a chocolate bar like yesterday is okay?”

“Yes, sure. Thanks.”

“No worries,” Brett said as he sat down, but making the point of moving over to where Isaac was sitting, so he was closer. “So, other than chocolate and songs about Earth, what does Engineer 1st Class Isaac Lahey like?”

Isaac slurped his juice and turned around to look at Brett, who simply stuck his tongue out and winked again.

“Well,” Isaac indulged him with a smirk, “I used to play tag-crosse back on Oberon, and sometimes we have games up in the observation bay, because it’s low-G. That’s fun. But otherwise? Dunno… I like going to the hydroponics bay to take care of the plants.”

“Oh, I always wanted to play tag-crosse! You’ll have to teach me some day. And you’re a gardener as well?”

“I think part-time farmer would be more accurate,” Isaac chuckled. “It gives me something to do on the days off.”

“Working on your days off? Urgh… Is it something with your Beacon H friends all together?”

“Ha! No… _Earth_ … I don’t think I’ll see the day Erica walks voluntarily there.”

“Is this Erica your friend or…?” Brett asked trying to sound casual, but for a brief instant Isaac could have sworn that Brett had been taken aback. Isaac felt the subconscious need to reassure him, even if he could come up with no logical explanation as to why he should.

“Yeah she’s my best friend here. We met when we came to the colony. Her and Boyd, which you’ve met.”

“Ah, yeah, I remember. So how does colonising work? I’ve never moved to a new colony in the frontier! Did you come over with your family?”

Isaac tensed and stopped chewing his chocolate. _He didn’t know. He couldn’t know_ , the engineer thought to himself. _It’s just a question. An innocent question. He does not know and does not want to know_.

“Isaac?” Brett sounded worried.

“Oh, erm… no. Sorry. My- my- Well. I have my foster family here. I, erm… I came with them,” he explained eventually. Isaac did not want to lie, but he did not want to talk about that either. “Although my foster brother is off, out on an observatory sub-station.”

Isaac did not know what he had expected Brett’s response to be, but the Ceresian surprised him yet again. “That’s so cool.”

“ _Cool_?”

“Yep. I also had a foster family,” the mechanic confessed, which gave Brett a completely different, relatable, and intriguing new depth. “And I also have a sibling. She’s called Lori.”

“Is she in the merchant navy too?”

“Nah, she’s an administrator on Ganymede II,” Brett looked down at his working boots as he spoke. “I try to see her whenever I can, but she’s happy there and I travel up and down the Solar System all the time. It’s a pity, really, ‘cause we hardly see each other anymore…”

Isaac was not sure of what he should do, because he had never been comfortable reassuring people (usually because whenever anyone pulled a sad story he always had a worse one), but now this guy, who had been nothing but kind and understanding to him was sad, and Isaac did not know what to do. His gut feeling was to put his hand on his knee and pat it, or maybe squeeze his hand, but his own mental filter reminded him how he would snap if someone tried to do that to him. Gently nudging his knee against Brett seemed an acceptable compromise, and his stomach flipped when Brett looked up and was not angry.

“If you stay here long enough you can probably meet Mason,” he offered, because now he wanted Brett to meet his foster family, apparently. “He normally comes back every three months as per regulations.”

“Is he your brother?” Brett asked innocently and something gritted in Isaac’s head, but he bit his tongue and nodded. “I’d love to meet him,” the mechanic smiled again, and Isaac did not have time to keep thinking; behind his giddy smile, he just filed that mental image of Brett beaming to relive it later.

**~*~**

“Whoa,” Braeden said later that evening, when she saw Isaac’s notes and tools spread across the canteen table. There were also greasy cogs and a pile of different bits of broken plastic arranged in a neat line, seemingly in colour sequence. “Don’t you have a workshop for this?”

“Yeah, well, sorry. That’s my fault,” Boyd replied from the far side. Braeden had not seen him. “I’ve dismantled one of the large arms of the Sunside docks and those things are big.”

“He’s hogging all the table space,” Isaac spat without looking up from his computer as he rhythmically tapped the table with a finger. “So when my shift finished on the _Melissa_ I had to come here to work.”

“Okay, can you explain what is going on?” the security officer pushed aside a neat pile of cogs to make room for her tray. “And if your shift is over why are you still working?”

Isaac huffed and passed his hand through his hair. “I don’t understand why the _Melissa_ is such a nightmare when the _Chimera_ is a wonderful example of astronaval construction.”

Braeden looked at Boyd asking silently for an explanation, but Boyd just shook his head and waved his hand ambiguously as he shovelled in a spoonful of his dinner.

“So, the _Melissa_ is a seven-year old ship. Built in the orbital shipyards of Mars, mind you,” Isaac explained, and while both Boyd and Braeden were Martians, for them all shipyards were the same. “The _Chimera_? The paperwork says she was built on Neptune.”

“So what?”

“The _NCSS Noah_ was built on Neptune,” Isaac deadpanned, as if that was the only thing he needed to say. The Noah was a perfectly serviceable passenger hopper that shuttled between Neptune, Pluto, Ultima Thule, and Beacon H. “The _Noah_ is nothing like the _Chimera_.”

“The _Noah_ is ancient, Isaac,” Boyd pointed out. Braeden nodded, because this was a part of the conversation she actually followed. “The _Chimera_ is new. You can’t compare them.”

“The _Chimera_ has new panels of high-density Galatean polymer!” Braeden and Boyd looked supremely unimpressed. Isaac rolled his eyes. “But not the museum stuff. It’s brand new, even if it is, like, colonial period tech.”

“Why is he going on about this?” Braeden looked at Boyd for an explanation.

At that moment Derek arrived with his dinner. “Space, Isaac. Don’t you have a workshop?”

“Derek, we need to go to Neptune,” the engineer concluded, seeing that nobody at his table was at all excited about the _Chimera_. “You, me, a handful of cash, and a romantic trip for two,” he then batted his eyelids and pulled a little smirk.

“Why Neptune and why us?” the Commander said as he kissed his wife and sat down, ignoring Isaac’s antics. Whatever this crazy obsession of his was, it was an improvement from brooding and heartbroken Chief of Engineering Lahey.

“Because I want to personally buy a metric fuckton of that stuff!” Isaac put his hands up. “You know how easier my life would be – _our_ lives would be—if we could start using that here? We just need to repurpose the polymer heat press to—”

“I’m going to stop you there,” Derek spoke as he chewed. His order would have carried more authority had he not been pointing at Isaac with a spork. “Why can’t we just import it?”

“Because the Supreme Arsehole of Pluto will confiscate it for himself?” It would not have been the first time that the political tensions between the inner, incorporated, Kuiper Belt and the outer, frontier, Kuiper Belt resulted in shortages for Beacon H. The governor of Pluto was infamously against the independence of the outer reaches of the Belt. “And because I don’t trust those traders to give us the real stuff.”

“Surely he could import it too?”

“Urgh, space! You are all heathens who don’t understand anything!” Isaac huffed and rolled up his computer so he could have his dinner

“Don’t worry Isaac. We get it,” Braeden smiled. “You’re a nerd.”

“But you’re our nerd,” Boyd added before finishing his drink.

“Great…”

“How’s the _Melissa_ doing, anyway?” Derek asked. Boyd and Braeden went tense.

Isaac took a couple of seconds before answering, during which Braeden not-so-subtly elbowed her husband in the ribs. That evening Scott and his crew were not in the canteen (or they had not been there yet, and Isaac had spent the best part of the evening there), and without the brown-eyed captain in sight the engineer felt better about that topic. He sighed.

“It’s a big mess.”

_In more ways than one, it is…_

Dinner came and went. Boyd and Derek actually helped Isaac tidy all his crap away, and storing it back in the workshop, but even after that Isaac did not feel like going back to his pod, so he stayed in the canteen taking advantage that it was much quieter after the meal service, playing on his computer and people watching, trying to keep his mind off the _Chimera_.

Of course, Tracy and Josh had to walk in then. Isaac rolled his eyes. The two of them found a table away from Isaac and sat without even saying hello. Isaac was already convinced that they were annoying Ringtards, but he still heard Mason’s voice echoing in his head. Simply to shut it up (but also to confirm his suspicions so he could gloat at Mason later), he walked over and tried to be friendly.

“How are you doing?” He asked with a grin rather than a smile. “Are you liking Beacon H?”

The two members of the _Chimera_ ’s crew looked at each other, before looking at Isaac as if he had sprung a second head.

“It’s not that much of a dump,” Josh said.

“I had expected something worse,” Tracy agreed. “Did you want anything?”

“Erm… I was just being nice?”

“Don’t bother,” Tracy snapped as she and Josh stood up. “We were already leaving anyway.”

The two crewpeople walked away from the table, brushing their shoulders with Isaac, who had to use his last ounce of self control not to send one of them to the sick bay.

“Gaser pricks…” he muttered as they walked away. It was then that he noticed that one of them had left one of their pocket-sized gizmos on the table, and Isaac grinned. “You dropped something, shitheads,” he said in a low voice, clearly not wanting them to know.

Isaac picked it up, and deduced that it must be some sort of new pocket computer. It looked like a very improved version of his semi-gel one, but he did not know how to use it. Yet. So he pocketed it and with all his fake nonchalance walked back to his table, gathered up his stuff, and walked back to his pod with a smirk.

**~*~**

A few days later, service corridor IIc-a of the _MCSS Melissa_ had been completely stripped of its panels, and all the pipes and cables were visible. One particular pipe (or, what was meant to be one single pipe but was three different pipes of varying diameter fitted together) was painted bright red, because that was the only one they were sure what it was. The rest, excepting that one that had once been a water pipe and that was still filled with a rank greyish liquid, remained an unsolved mystery.

To Isaac’s dismay, Scott got into the habit of walking into the corridor every morning to see what the progress was. They were in a hurry, but without the complete tholin cargo they could not leave even if the engineer gave him the green light. Isaac’s main problem was that he could no longer avoid Scott. Erica had told him often enough that, if he had really accepted that whatever he and Scott might have had was not going to be, he better act like it, so whenever the captain came with his bubbly smile, his big brown eyes, and his innocent questions, Isaac had to swallow his bile, bite his cheek, and give a quick report.

Captain McCall had noticed how Isaac was now much more distant than what he used to be; he noticed how the engineer stood just slightly further than he would have, and how his eyes seemed dimmer and greyer than the deep Neptune-blue he had known. Isaac could almost sense Scott’s questions, but he just thanked that he never asked.

On the plus side, every time after Scott left (which was when Isaac was in his sourest mood), Brett would bring up an anecdote from his trips across the Solar System. This was completely unprompted, and Isaac often did not even comment, but the mechanic did it regardless. Brett would tell funny stories from his high school days on Ceres, or how he once worked on a radio signal station in the Inner Belt that was almost hit by a passing hopper to Mars.

Isaac still had a plan, but that did not mean that he could not relax a notch and feel at ease while working with Brett – especially since all the objections and ‘buts’ that Isaac could come up with to stay away from him were not based on what Brett did or said.

“Isaac,” Brett called one afternoon from his side of the corridor. He had rolled out of the top half of his boiler suit and tied it around his waist, and was only in his tight-fitting and grease-stained working shirt. “You see that cable hanging there?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you move it a bit to the right?” he asked and he pointed with his wrench.

“Sure.” Isaac stood up from the floor where he had been working and walked towards the cable. “This one?”

“Yep. A bit to the right. Please.”

Without the floor panels, the cable was just about out of reach, and Isaac had to stand on tiptoes and stretch his arms.

“This far?”

“A bit more.”

“Here?” Isaac huffed as he stretched a bit further.

“Hang on, hold there. Yeah, perfect. But don’t let go!”

“Wait, what?” Isaac stammered while keeping the cable up in its new place. “W- why?”

“Oh, nothing,” Brett said with an absolutely and most-definitely not-innocent smirk. “Have you noticed how your shirt lifts when you’re like that?”

Isaac felt his ears and his chest flare up as he became, all of a sudden, very aware of his exposed skin. He was so shocked that he did not even let go of the cable until Brett spoke again.

“Thanks, Isaac. You can put it down. That’s been the highlight of my week. Nice abs, by the way…”

The engineer very slowly brought down his arms, making sure the cable was secured in its new place and then very purposefully pulled his shirt down and tucked it in his trousers. His face was a mask of complete and utter shock, because he had fallen for that but, somehow, he was also trying to stop himself from laughing. Isaac _might_ have pulled a similar stunt once with a crewman from Charon and a pipe he could not reach down a hatch, but Brett did not need to know that, because of moral high grounds.

Brett simply stood there, giggling and almost crying with laughter, but very quickly blurted a torrent of half-laughed apologies. Isaac had to admit it had been funny, but he wondered for a second whether he should lob a wrench at the giggling asteroid.

“We’re working here, you know?” Isaac scolded, knowing that _that_ was what he should be saying.

“I know, I’m so sorry,” Brett kept giggling, simply because Isaac was so clearly trying not to.

“You haven’t even asked me out for a drink.”

“Would you like to?”

The question was there, a sincere proposal. To his credit, Brett even stopped laughing to say it with a soupçon of decorum. _It would be so easy_ , Isaac thought. _So easy, and simple, and straight forward. And maybe you deserve it. But tall, blue-eyed crewmen leave with their ships, and you don’t want that. You don’t need that._

“Let’s get back to work,” Isaac muttered as he turned around back to his slowly-updating holoplan.

“Hey, Isaac, I really meant it,” Brett said, clearly coming over, but Isaac would not turn around. He was plainly conflicted by the sudden change. “Both that I’m sorry and the going out for a drink thing…”

“Just leave it there, Brett,” Isaac said in a clipped tone. A second later Brett went back to where he was working. Isaac sighed, realising he was being unfair. “It’s just… easier. I mean, with what has happened and…”

“That’s okay, man. I’m sorry. No need to explain,” Isaac could hear the smile in Brett’s voice, and he honest to space wished that things were different. “What if I bring us a couple of cartons of juice and two chocolate bars?”

Isaac snorted, mostly because he could not believe how Brett could make him go from one emotional end to the other. He turned around to look at the mechanic, who was beaming at him as if nothing had happened, as if getting sugary snacks was the most common thing in the world.

“That’d be cool, thanks,” the Uranian said in a small voice.

“No problem,” he said before clapping his hands and walking to the upper deck.

_What is_ wrong _with you? Get a fucking grip, Lahey…_

**~*~**

“It was an accident!” Liam mumbled as Brett and Isaac sat him down on the chrome bed of the station’s sick bay, where they had to rush him from the _Melissa_.

“What kind of accident lands you a fist-shaped bruise around your eye and a bloody nose?” Dr Deaton, the station’s medic, said as he pulled an ice pack from his freezer.

“ _Do you want a list_?” Isaac muttered under his breath to himself, but not low enough, because Brett turned around to look at him with a very worried look on his face. Isaac pretended not to notice.

“No, I mean. The punch was not an accident. I was looking for the spare parts that Isaac asked for—”

“Erm… don’t throw me there, shortarse,” Isaac objected and Brett sniggered. Liam turned for a second to glare daggers.

“I left the drawer open and Hayden came in, and she was calling for me, but I was on the stool and then I turned, and then…” Liam waved his hands around emphatically for Deaton’s sake, hoping his arm flailing would convey better what had happened.

“And then this box full of crap fell off the shelf and Hayden was right underneath,” Isaac explained. He had been there and seen everything in slow motion. Brett turned around and badly covered his sniggering with a cough.

“She was not meant to be there,” was Liam’s conclusion.

“Well,” Deaton said as he applied a glowing-green cream on Liam’s blackening eye, “where is she now? Is she hurt?”

“Malia took her to the ship’s sick bay,” Liam said as he pressed the ice pack against his nose.

“And she also yelled in very explicit terms where we could take Liam to,” Isaac concluded with a smirk.

“She did not say the medic bay, though,” Brett pointed, his eyes fixed on Isaac.

“She’s usually so nice,” Liam shook his head in disbelief. “And it was an accident…”

“Okay, well, thank you for bringing him here,” Deaton said to Brett and Isaac. “But now if you could give us a couple of minutes, I need to do a full assessment of the patient.”

“Sure, doc,” Isaac said and he walked out to the waiting bench, followed closely by Brett.

Isaac collapsed on the bench with a humph and Brett sat by his side. Their knees and their shoulders ended up brushing, and Isaac felt an electric feeling running through him, but still decided not to push apart. At least until he began to fluster and changed the way he was sitting to shift slightly forward. Brett put his hands in his pockets and leaned back.

“It’s crazy what’s going on between those two,” the mechanic said casually, but looking intently at the back of Isaac’s head.

“Why?” Isaac rested his elbows on his knees and stared ahead.

“They are going around each other, fearing what might happen.”

“I don’t think Liam is walking around. He seems pretty oblivious to me.”

“You’re only seeing one side of the story.” Isaac turned around when Brett said this, his brow knotted into a quizzical expression. Brett just shrugged and sat up straight. “You haven’t heard him when we’re back on the _Melissa_.”

“And what does he say?”

“I’m not _that_ kind of gossip,” Brett smirked, and Isaac rolled his eyes.

“And none of you have told him anything? Put him out of his misery?”

“He doesn’t listen, and we don’t push. Have _you_ told Hayden anything?” Brett countered.

“Me? No… we’re not close like that… And maybe he is not ready?” Isaac guessed, making little sense, because he was not sure anymore if they were still talking about Hayden and Liam.

Brett turned ever so slightly and made a move with his hand. Out of pure instinct Isaac shifted away, and ended up standing up. The Ceresian mechanic pursed his lips into a thin smile and slowly brought his hands back. His blue eyes offered a silent apology.

“Do you want to talk about Scott?” Brett offered after a couple of seconds, and Isaac froze.

There was no way Brett did not know about him and Scott. Half of the crew of the _Melissa_ knew, and he must have seen how he reacted whenever the captain was around. And while Brett’s statement was bluntly put, his tone was soft, low, and caring. His eyes were looking at Isaac, saying far more words than his mouth had. He was there for Isaac if he wanted to talk. He would listen; he would not judge. Isaac wanted to believe that, but he could not.

“Please don’t,” Isaac he said in a cold tone.

Despite the no-no policy and the stay-away-from-blue-eyed-mechanics pep talks, the Uranian had thought that with Brett he could escape his collapsing Scott-focused world. But he had to bring Scott up. Why was everyone so obsessed with him talking? What was the point? It was not going to change the past and it could only make the present worse.

“Isaac, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did. Just, please… I- I-“ Isaac stammered for a second, not knowing what else to say. This was not like the previous day with the cable and the drink offer. Brett was sitting down, apologising, waiting for him and giving him space, but what Isaac wanted was to push all of his Scott thoughts away and forget them forever. “Can you keep an eye on Liam?”

“Yes?” Brett replied, but he sounded wounded.

“Okay, I’ll go back to my workshop then.”

“Wait. Isaac?”

“I’ll get back to you,” Isaac said before turning and walking away.

Isaac stormed from the sick bay, and all but ran through the Avenue towards the ring, but before he could reach the exit he physically bumped into Theo, which was only marginally better than bumping into Scott or Allison.

“Hey, sorry,” he apologised with his unnerving accent and his smile.

_Fuck off,_ he thought, but he actually filtered his thoughts before speaking. “Yeah, whatever, sorry.”

“That’s okay, I wasn’t looking,” he chuckled and Isaac really, really wanted him to shut up and leave him alone. “You look upset, though?”

“Yeah, well. Life sucks right now, but I’ve got to go—”

“I know I just arrived, Isaac,” Theo said, and to his credit, he did look concerned. “But you seem like a decent guy, and I don’t like seeing you like this.”

Isaac was considering whether to give him a second chance, but not right now. Isaac really needed to get home and hide under his bed.

“Yeah, well… whatever, maybe some other day?”

“Of course,” Theo smiled, but it wasn’t like when Scott smiled. Or like when Brett smiled. “You know where to find me if you want to…”

And right then Theo moved forward, with all the intent of putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Isaac did not care anymore if he was being unfair (he would have time to loathe himself about it later), he stopped him there and then with a raised finger and a stern face.

“Don’t touch me.”

Theo was taken aback by that, and he seemed hurt by this. He began to mumble an apology while putting his hands up, but Isaac just stepped away, glaring.

But then he remembered something in his pocket.

“Oh, and I think this is yours,” Isaac turned around and threw the microcomputer that Tracy had left behind in the canteen. Theo caught it with ease. It must have had some sort of block that he could not crack, or else he did not know how to use the gizmo. In either case, it was a useless piece of fancy new junk. “I think one of your dickhead Gaser crew left it behind.”

Isaac spun on his heel without waiting for a reply.

**~*~**

Thankfully, the following day was Isaac’s day off, so he did not have to beg Boyd to go and work on the _Melissa_ for him. He seriously contemplated the possibility of hiding for two days in his pod, watching old holos of terrible Martian teen dramas like the ones he used to watch with Erica on the _Talia_ , but half of them always had a token Ceresian character, and that was the last thing Isaac needed. So he had a lazy morning in bed, hating himself every now and then for his inability to have normal interactions with Brett, despite both, a) the fact that the mechanic had been nothing but nice to him and b) that he had a perfect and fool-proof no-mechanics-allowed plan.

He took a shower hoping that would clear his head and, when he got out, he forced himself to focus on anything but Scott, Brett or the _Melissa_ , so he decided to ask the Hewitts if they wanted to have lunch. A few seconds later he got a call from Leonor saying that they would love it.

“Could you sneak by the hydroponics bay and bring us something fresh?” she asked with a hint of malice, because she knew Isaac could sneak out fresh fruit and vegetables.

“Sure…” he said before hanging up.

_The hydroponics bay?_ He would have to go out of his Block and go through the hub.

For a couple of seconds, Isaac considered seriously if going out and risking an Encounter was better than hiding home and moping under the bed covers, but then he caught a glimpse of two of the photos that he had framed on his shelf: one of him and Camden with their mother on their trip to Io, and another of him and the Hewitts during the inauguration of Beacon H. Losing a family did not mean that he had to be unkind to the new one that had taken him in.

_Isaac Lahey, be a fucking spaceman. You’re better than this. This is what dad thought of you._

Isaac took a deep breath and decided to make it quick. Out, elevator, hydroponics, and back; easy.

He might have walked faster than he ever had, and looked a sufficient number of times behind his shoulder, but Isaac made it to the hydroponics bay without bumping into anyone from the _Melissa_. He also made it back to the ring without seeing either of Brett or Scott, but he did see Josh and Tracy. The crew of the _Chimera_ glared at him, but said nothing. Isaac did not pay them much attention, but he noticed that Tracy had her hand in a cast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have written a side story that explains a bit more in depth how Mason and corey got together: [A Match Made in Space](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28816707)!


	8. Not ready yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isaac was not really sure what had just happened. Brett (Brett, of all people!) just came towards him, trying to be supportive, with his big blue eyes and his stupid helpful smile and his everything… and he just yelled at him? Why would he do that? Isaac was too confused – he was angry at Scott, wasn’t he?
> 
> OR: Isaac is very confused, and all his bottled emotions burst in the worst ways

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, many, many thanks to i_dont_want_to_tell_you_my_name because without his help this story would not be what it is!

Isaac was twitchy. He should be on the _Melissa_ , but he was in the engineering workshop, although because Boyd was there still working on the robotic arm, Isaac could not really say that he was hiding (which sort of defeated the purpose of being there).

“Isaac, you’re doing it again,” Boyd said without looking up as he welded something with precision.

“I’m fine.”

“I did not say you weren’t.”

“But you’re thinking it.”

Boyd put his tool down and spun on his chair. He put his goggles on his forehead before speaking.

“Do you want me to go through the facts I’ve got?”

“Is it me being here and not on the _Melissa_?”

“That’s only one, but yes,” he said patiently. Isaac scowled.

“This is not because of Scott,” Isaac deadpanned as he pretended to look for something in his drawers.

“Everything about you and the _Melissa_ is about Scott.”

“Well… it’s not about Scott this time,” the blond half-admitted.

“If you’re sure…”

Before Boyd could elaborate further, the door slid open and Greenberg walked in.

“Hey, boss. Hello, Mr Boyd.”

“Mr Greenberg,” Isaac turned around, happy for once with the interruption. “Anything to report?”

“Nah, not really,” Greenberg walked to his workbench to drop his toolbox. “The oil compressors of the Oort docks lost pressure, but nothing that could not be fixed there and then.”

“Good.”

“Oh, and Captain McCall sent a message, asking for an update,” Greenberg added with a conflicted smile. He knew about Scott and Allison, and he knew how badly Isaac had taken the news. “This I know through Hayden directly, and she says: ‘please don’t make me ask Derek’. Her words, not mine…” the mechanic said as calmly as possible, not wanting to set Isaac off.

The silence that followed lasted an eternity, and during it Boyd and Greenberg looked at each other nervously as Isaac tapped his fingers on his table. Boyd was about to say something when Isaac made a weird huffing groan before sighing.

“Fine.”

Without adding anything else, he walked out of the workshop, leaving Greenberg and Boyd stunned and without understanding what was going through Isaac’s head.

_It’s been two days, it’s all fine. Surely he’s forgotten. Besides, you’re going there because of Scott, and it’s just Scott wanting to be professional. You can be professional. And Brett… Brett will understand? You just have to apologise. He’s understanding. He’s always understanding. But why did he want to know about Scott? Why can’t people just shut up, press on, and not discuss stuff? Everything would be so much easier if he weren’t such an annoying tease. But I kind of like him being a tease? I really hope he accepts my apology._

Isaac stopped his derailing train of thought just as he arrived to the airlock of the _Melissa_. He checked the time, and checked his buzzer for messages. Then he wrote a few notes and sent some other messages that he had been meaning to write, until he could not delay the inevitable anymore and walked onto the ship.

“Isaac!” Scott called once Isaac walked onto the bridge, his beaming smile a painful reminder of his own cowardice. “I’m so happy you could come.”

“Hey, Scott,” he said with a shadow of a smile. “Did you want an update?”

“Yeah, I did,” he said as if going through the list of mechanical problems were the most exciting thing that had happened to him all day. “Come over here, we’re all waiting for you.”

“We?” Isaac had no chance to run away, because Scott was leading him through the corridors of the upper deck already.

“Yeah, it’s a crew debrief.”

_Crap. Crap-crap-crap. Shit._

But before Isaac could run away, he was already standing in a room with all the crew of the _Melissa_ waiting for him, sitting under a holoprojection of the ship’s blueprints. Stiles gave him a vague welcoming wave, and Liam smiled at him despite his taped nose and his black eye. Lydia gave him a polite nod, much like Malia’s. He could not help noticing that Allison only gave him a cold glare, but Isaac could not care less at that point. The worst was seeing Brett, who was sitting in a corner with his arms crossed, and looking at him with a worried look that only made Isaac feel guilty. Well, guiltier.

“I, well… erm… What do you want me to say, Captain McCall?” Isaac scratched the back of his head as he avoided looking at Brett.

“Just call me Scott!” Scott smiled again, as if nothing had ever happened between them. Isaac suddenly had an urge to either punch something or bang his head against a wall. “But I mean, we understand that we have a minor problem that could be something much bigger later—”

“And we understand that you are doing your best,” Lydia intervened before Isaac panicked even more. “Also, it’s not as if we can leave just yet with only one third of the cargo…” When Lydia said that in her threatening tone, Isaac felt an inexplicable relief, knowing that whoever was ferrying those tholin cargoes would have to deal with a furious Lydia Martin.

“Yeah, and Brett has been telling us all the things that are wrong,” Malia continued, ignoring all sense of rank and hierarchy, “but he says that you’re in a better position to explain it all because you know best.”

Instinctively, Isaac turned to look at the mechanic, who nodded with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes, just in case Isaac was not feeling guilty and useless enough already.

“Yes… well, you see here?” Isaac pointed at a random point on the holoplan, but his gaze was lost in Brett’s eyes, which was the worst idea ever. “This is all wrong.”

Once Isaac started, he could not stop. He went into autopilot mode, detailing all the problems with the design, construction, and maintenance of the _Melissa_ without noticing the increasing looks of disbelief on everyone’s faces – everyone but Brett and Scott, both of whom knew (one more than the other) what was going on. After a twenty-minute thorough explanation, Isaac concluded that, surprisingly there was nothing _too_ wrong, that the ship was fit to fly, but that there was a big list of minor issues that were liable to cause a major problem further down the line. Scott thanked him, the crew was dismissed, and everyone made their way out of the briefing room.

“You going out?” Brett asked when it was only him and Isaac in the room and before the engineer could leave.

“I… don’t we need to go down to work?”

“I’m running a robotic realignment with one of your H12’s,” Brett dismissed as he gently guided Isaac out of the ship and away from eavesdroppers. “That’ll take a while.”

“Okay, Brett,” Isaac sighed and he stopped, forcing the mechanic to come to a halt and turn around. “Why are you like this?”

“What do you mean?” the Ceresian smiled.

“You being like this with me.”

Brett took a deep breath.

“Is it so difficult for you to believe that I really care?”

 _Yes, and you shouldn’t_. But Isaac simply remained silent, feeling that Brett had more to say.

“I admit that asking about Scott was perhaps tactless,” Brett offered mostly to appease Isaac, even if he had mentioned it very casually and not at all in a prying way. “But I just can’t help it, because you change completely whenever he’s around, and also afterwards. And I don’t like it… You shouldn’t torture yourself like that, whatever happened between you two.”

Brett might not want to ask about him and Scott, but he was certainly making it the focus of his talk, and Isaac did not like that.

“You have no idea, do you?” Isaac was not sure if he believed that. “And why do you care anyway?”

“I care about you—”

“Yeah, _right_ ,” Isaac snorted as he rolled his eyes. “As if you do.”

“Why would you say that?” For a change, Brett was now cross, which made it easier for Isaac to lash out.

“Why? Because it’s always the same. Fucking. Story. Because why would you? Why would _anyone_? Because you all come here to my station and then fuck off or come back with a girlfriend, and I’m getting fed up with that! I know I’m just—.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Brett could not believe what Isaac was saying. “Have you even stopped to think about what you’re saying?”

Isaac had not, really. He had just blurted his frustration, because he was not good enough for Scott, and he would be damned to Oort if he was good enough for Brett. It was easier if it was their fault. There was a sick comfort in knowing that his father had been right all along. It took less thinking.

“Yeah, whatever, I’m off.”

“Wait, Isaac, _please_ ,” Brett insisted and he stepped forward, reaching with his hand towards the engineer, but Isaac sensed it and recoiled.

“Do _not_ touch me,” he warned in an icy voice, but his eyes were already red and teary.

Brett stood still and slowly put his hand away. Isaac had to avoid looking into his blue eyes because Brett’s look was like a punch to his stomach. Because he had hurt him. _Good. At least now he’ll stay away_.

Isaac sniffed and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand before walking out of the _Melissa_ , leaving Brett behind.

_So much for apologising to him…_

**~ * ~**

Isaac was not really sure what had just happened. Brett (Brett, of all people!) just came towards him, trying to be supportive, with his big blue eyes and his stupid helpful smile and his _everything_ … and he just _yelled_ at him? Why would he do that? Isaac was too confused – he was angry at Scott, wasn’t he? It had been a while, so he was not sure. But it was all Scott’s fault in the first place. Scott is the one who broke his heart.

He crossed the docking bay and darted off to his workshop. He told Greenberg to get his kit and head to the _Melissa_ because there was something else he needed doing. With a quick ‘yes, boss’ the other mechanic packed his stuff and left. Isaac collapsed on his chair and groaned once the door slid shut. _What is wrong with you?_ Of course, he knew there were many things wrong with him; his father had made sure he was aware of them. In any case, Isaac could not deal with Brett, or Scott, or his father right now. It was for these occasions that he had a bottle of his own home brew, which was dense, sweet, and had a massive kick to it. He did not do it often, and he always felt bad for being so similar to his father, but there were times when he felt he had no other option. He pulled a stool over, climbed on it, and reached behind the rolls of wires until he found what he was looking for.

He looked at the glass bottle and pulled the cork with his teeth. “Here goes to you, _Scott_ ,” he toasted to no one, and took a long gulp.

Fifteen minutes later, the bottle was half gone. Isaac knew he had had enough, and was only slowly realising that perhaps this had not been such a great idea. Drinking during working hours was not best policy (being drunk in his workshop would definitely look bad), but he was still so mad at Scott! Or maybe he was mad at himself? What else could he have done? He did not know or care. He was both angry and sad, which he did not know were compatible feelings. The thing was that maybe Brett had a solution for him; he had offered to help and to listen. But that was not going to be an option anymore. Not after what he had done. _Well done, Lahey. You sure are making dad proud._

Isaac looked at the bottle, waiting for an answer. On the one hand, he knew he should stop. He was drinking during working hours, for space’s sake, and he had an application to visit Earth currently under review. He also knew he was better than that (and definitely better than his father). But, on the other, it was just simpler to be drunk and not have to think about Scott and Allison, or about Brett or Earth. He was going to die in that forgotten space station anyways. He was never going to be a spaceman. Cam was never going to come looking for him. He felt like he was drowning in his thoughts.

He was thirsty, and he was hungry. He was also not drunk enough to forget about why he started drinking in the first place. Perhaps he just needed a decent and greasy plate of fried food. Isaac penned a quick note to Greenberg and left for the canteen, closing the workshop behind him. Half a minute later he walked back and took the bottle of his sweet brew, just in case.

The canteen was not that busy, so Isaac secured a seat at the far corner. He ordered some food and paid with his meal credits, and sat down with a large glass of water to eat, his bottle in his pocket, just in case, weighing him down. Isaac was thinking on how he did not care that on Earth and other places where they could keep actual animals, sausages apparently contained meat, when Tracy and Josh walked in, being their loud and obnoxious selves. _Great_. To say that he would rather sit down with Scott and Allison for a romantic dinner than having those hovering around was an understatement. 

Josh was whistling that annoying tune again when he and Tracy sat at the far end of the table he was at.

_They’re doing it on purpose…_

“Why don’t you two find a different table?” Isaac grunted. He had not cursed, so that counted as a polite request.

“Easy there,” Tracy said with her irritating accent. “We’re just on our lunch break. Although you seem to have started early on the juice, haven’t you?”

“Why don’t you do me a favour and just sit elsewhere?” That also counted as polite warning.

“Come on, Isaac. Cheer up, and have a drink on us,” Josh scoffed. “That’s what you all on Uranus do all the time, right?”

“Just belt up, Gaser,” Isaac spat. This one was really testing his patience.

“Whoa, you’ve clearly had enough for the day, Uranal,” Josh very purposefully used the one term you did not use for a Uranian – at least not to their face.

“Right—”

Isaac pushed his tray aside and stood up. In two strides he was already by Josh with his fists clenched. Josh had anticipated this and was up as well, keeping his hands in front of him, trying to keep Isaac out of punching range.

“That’s enough!” a voice called over. Josh looked over and grinned when he saw that it was Theo. Isaac suddenly felt he had jumped from the pan to the fire. “Hey, Lahey, I know Josh can be infuriating at times, but there’s no need to get nasty like that?”

Theo walked around the table until he was standing in between Josh and Isaac. Isaac was still fuming, but he put his fists down at least, ready to give Josh a chance to apologise. And then, Theo did _it_ ; he put one calming hand on his shoulder and another on his chest. He was clearly trying to be appeasing, but he had decided to appease _him_ and not Josh. To make things worse, he was pulling that mocking grin of his as he told Isaac to sit down and calm down. Whatever his intentions were, Isaac could only feel cornered by Theo, who had blatantly invaded his personal space, right at the moment when he was the least ready for that.

“Don’t listen to him, Lahey,” he went on, still close to him, still with the same smirk that Isaac was dying to punch out of his face. “He didn’t mean it… we’re all on the same ship, right?”

And there it was: no intention to apologise, asking him to forget about it, with his _fucking_ accent, that ringed distant bells of his father, putting his frigging mitts on _him_? Isaac shrugged Theo’s hands off and took a step back.

“Don’t touch me,” he warned, completely serious. He did _not_ like being touched, especially by the likes of Theo, and all of his body stirred in alarm. Erica invaded his personal space all the time, but Isaac had learnt to live with that. Otherwise, Boyd knew better than to get too close, and even Derek made sure that Isaac was all-okay before clapping him on the shoulder.

“Hey, Isaac,” Theo kept grinning, even with his hands up in the air. He sounded calm. He sounded appeasing. And then he said it. The same thing his father used to say, in the same patronising tone. “We don’t want you to get hurt, do we?”

Isaac’s sight was blurred into a tunnelling red mist that focused on Theo’s arrogant face. Before he realised what was happening, he had lashed forward. Isaac blinked, and the next thing he noticed was that he was straddling Theo, who was on the floor with a bleeding nose and a swelling eye. His knuckles began to sting, which told him that he had actually landed a punch or two on the ringtard. Slowly he began to understand the trouble he was in, but _damn_ , it had felt good… so why stop? Isaac gripped Theo’s collar and got ready to swing when a voice shouted his name.

“ISAAC!”

The engineer turned around, his heavy breathing steadily slowing down, only to see Scott looking at him in stunned disbelief, his eyes asking for an explanation desperately. Because _of course_ it would be Captain McCall who saw him lose it; because it was not enough that he did not like him, he now had to actively dislike Isaac for being a moody and violent drunkard.

The engineer slowly stood up, his eyes fixed on Theo and avoiding Scott’s disappointed face, and the next thing he noticed was Josh tackling him to the ground, charging with his shoulder into his chest.

**~ * ~**

“Why did you do it?” Braeden asked with a sigh once Isaac was in the cell.

“I really had to…” Isaac snorted.

“Well, you’re clearly still drunk. Sleep it off, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

“No, no, no! Wait!” he called before his friend left the security unit. The cell was big enough that it would not trigger any unpleasant memories, but he was still going to be trapped in a small room overnight. “Do you really need to keep me here?”

“Isaac…”

“Okay, yeah, right, forget that… but must you tell him?”

Braeden turned around and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Isaac, you got into a fight with docked crew from another station; so yes, I have to tell the station commander.”

“You used to be cool,” Isaac taunted through a smile.

“I’m still cool,” she crossed her arms over her chest. “And I still have to tell Derek.”

Isaac groaned. A part of him was thankful that his application for Earth had already been submitted, but he feared what Derek could do, or what might happen if he decided to amend his official record (again).

“But he’s going to be all… _disappointed_. And he’ll do that thing with the eyebrows, and I really feel that’s worse than him yelling. I- I- I can take being yelled at but that upset mask he wears… That’s too much.”

“He rescued you from that death trap on Uranus and gave you the chance to become a spaceman,” Braeden said softly. She knew well what Isaac and Derek’s backstory was. “He really feels responsible for you, you know? He’ll deny it, but out of the three of you” Braeden meant him, Erica and Boyd, “you’re his favourite.”

“He’s not famous for showing it.”

“Oh, believe me. You’d know if you were not in his good books. Think of Greenberg.”

Isaac had to chuckle at that. It was true that Derek cared for him, in his odd weird way.

“I’ll come around later with your dinner. Just drink that water ‘til then.”

Isaac was not given much of a chance, so his only option was to think about what he had done as he waited for his dinner (and, knowing Braeden, he would get something palatable and not the bottom of the barrel that was usually kept for the cells). The problem was that he did not really want to think – thinking, much like talking, implied going through what he felt and he never liked looking too much into that because he was afraid of what he might find. Derek and the Hewitts and Erica (and Brett) all insisted that there was something good inside him, something worthy of the affection he received. But they hardly knew him. Dad knew him, and he had a very different opinion. So everything was easier if he just avoided thinking about it at all.

Isaac soon realised that everything would be better if he had his bottle with him, but that had been the first thing that had been taken away from him. Of course, the bottle had been how it all had started in the first place. Or had it? It all had started with Scott and with Isaac being too coward to do anything about it – with disastrous results. Then Brett had appeared just when Isaac was ready to accept that he was moving on.

Earlier that morning he had wanted to apologise to Brett, but after what had happened after the meeting on the _Melissa_ he was not sure that was an option anymore. Just like with Scott. Because he was an asteroid who screwed everything. He always did. That was why Cam had never come back for him. Probably this time Derek had had enough of him too and would pack him out to a distant drilling station.

When Isaac opened his eyes next the lights of the cell had been dimmed to Earth-like night. A bowl of cold food sat on the shelf by his bunk. The station’s AI let Isaac know that it was 2:30 standard.

**~ * ~**

Isaac did not get much sleep after that; he was too busy thinking how he was never going to be a spaceman and how he would end up his days drunk like his father in this forgotten corner of the Solar System. As soon as he had his breakfast, Braeden came to find him and took him up to Station Command, where Derek was already waiting for him. That would have been unbearable enough, but because Isaac’s life was never easy, Theo and Scott were both there too: the former sitting on the left chair, showing off his black eye and hardly concealing a smug smirk, while the latter looked positively shocked and sad, sitting opposite. This left Isaac to sit in the middle, while Braeden stood behind him.

“Engineer 1st class Isaac Lahey, Station Chief of Engineering,” Derek said in the same official tone he had used all those years ago, when he had granted him asylum onboard the _Talia_. At least he had not called him ‘Mr Lahey’ this time.

“Morning,” he said with self-disdain. Scott tried to give him a small smile, but Isaac avoided his gaze and felt his ears heat up. “Nice shiner,” he spat at Theo, not short of pride.

“For the record,” Derek said aloud and pointing at the AI deck on his desk, whilst still drilling Isaac with his gaze before he could do something else, “this is a disciplinary review of the events that took place yesterday on Kuiper Belt Station Beacon H at 12:25 standard. Summoned here are the two involved parts, Isaac Lahey, Engineer 1st Class, Kuiper Corps of Engineers, Chief of Engineering of Beacon H, and Theo Raeken, captain of the _UTSS Chimera_. Present as witness is also Scott McCall, citizen of the Martian Council, and captain of the _MCSS Melissa_.”

“Can we cut the crap, Derek?” Isaac said, wanting this to be over, but Derek glared back in silence. “Yes, I punched his lights out. Yes, I had a drink. You don’t need Doc Deaton to write a report, and we don’t need an official enquiry.”

“If I may,” Scott intervened before Derek burst a vein, “and seeing that this is being very straight forward, I would like to add my testimony to Isaac’s statement.”

“Scott, please, don’t…” Isaac muttered.

“No, Isaac, listen,” Scott said, righteously angry on his behalf. “Because whatever happens today, the main culprit in all this is not here.”

“What do you mean?” Theo asked, his cocky poise gone for a second.

“I saw everything,” Scott insisted. “It was your crewman who started it all. That dark-haired man deliberately insulted Isaac and taunted him, taking advantage of his inebriation.”

“I’m the one who was punched,” Theo smirked and pointed at his eye, in case there was any doubt. “I tried to keep them apart.”

“You blamed Isaac! You didn’t even pretend to reprimand your crew!” Scott defended the engineer, and Isaac only wanted to find a hatch and jump out into space out of embarrassment. “He had called him a Ur—erm… he used a xenophobic slur, and you still blamed it on _him_?”

“Scott please,” Isaac begged, but the captain would not listen, affronted by Theo’s position. “I threw the punch.”

“No, Isaac. What kind of justice do you have here in the outer rim? I should call Lydia over and—”

“Okay, _enough_ ,” Derek said before Theo and Scott got into a fight of their own. To their credit, the two captains shut up. The Station Commander then stood up, but he kept his hands on his desk. “This is getting out of hand. And for your information, Captain McCall, the Beacon H charter is taken directly from Terra, so any complaints you have about our justice system I recommend you take it up to the Home World. So yes, by all means, call the Political Commissioner. Be my guest – which you _are_.”

“Derek, stop it with the pissing contest,” Isaac groaned, knowing well that the Terran was quick to take insult himself, especially with uppity captains from the inner planets.

“No, Isaac, you don’t understand the gravity of the situation,” Derek said, staring down at the engineer. “It’s not your Earth application that is on the line because of a brawl,” of course, Derek had to pour salt on his wound, “and I am very aware of the misbehaving of Josh Díaz; but as Captain McCall is very keen to point out, we are currently being assessed by the Mars council, and if we ever want the Outer Rim to be an incorporated council we cannot fail here.”

Isaac rolled his eyes as Derek went on about how they were being scrutinised with the finest of fine-toothed combs and the difficult position the outer colonies were in right now. The engineer dared a quick glance at Scott, who was glaring at Theo while he furiously typed on his buzzer, probably calling Lydia to come over. Why did he care so much about him? What was it with the people on the _Melissa_? There must be something in the air. Isaac had read that they had pumped a large quantity of ozone into Mars in the early days, and that must have turned the colonists’ brains soft.

But then Isaac looked at Theo, who seemed suddenly quite confused by Derek’s political rant. His cocky attitude disappeared the moment he realised the actual extent of this brawl enquiry.

“So yes,” Derek concluded, “let’s wait for Lydia and then we can have a full interplanetary enquiry!”

“Wait, wait,” Theo stood up now. Isaac could swear he was nervous. “There is no need for all of that.”

“Captain Raeken, please rest assured that we—” Derek tried to reassure the captain, but Theo did not seem to care.

“No, I mean, there is no need to go that far! This was just a brawl, right? No, delete that; it was not even a brawl. It was just a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding?” Derek asked dryly. Scott arched an eyebrow and crossed his arms. Isaac had to blink twice, because that was unexpected. Behind him, Braeden did a funny cough, which the engineer knew was her way of hiding a laugh.

“There is no need to bring the inner councils or the interplanetary bar. I have had very serious words with Josh,” Theo declared, but Isaac somehow doubted it. “And I just came here to apologise.”

“Wait, apologise?” Derek was still trying to process this turn of events. “ _You_ came to apologise to him?”

“I’m still here, Derek,” Isaac complained.

“Of course. I just wanted to apologise to Isaac on behalf of my crew, who has misbehaved. That is, if he is willing to apologise for the shiner,” Theo added with a smirk, literally trying to laugh all this kerfuffle off.

“You don’t want to press this forward?” Derek said in plain English, asking for a clear and unequivocal answer.

“Perish the thought,” Theo grinned again and extended his hand out for Isaac to shake. “All for the outer rim? Us Koops are all on the same ship after all.”

Isaac looked at Derek, who was still not sure of what happened. Just to double check, and simply because he innately trusted him, Isaac turned around to look at Scott who looked back at Isaac with his soft brown eyes and a quick shrug of his shoulders, as if this was a good outcome.

“This won’t reflect on your Earth application,” Braeden whispered into Isaac’s ear. “You might as well.”

Slowly, and seriously considering his other options, Isaac took Theo’s hand and shook it. The captain grinned and shook back.

“Brilliant. Again, I am terribly sorry, Isaac, but let bygones be bygones?” he kept smiling and holding Isaac’s hand, making him sweat uncomfortably.

“Don’t you have anything to say, Isaac?” Derek sighed, because somehow Isaac was still his seventeen-year-old moody foster kid.

“Yeah, sorry for that.”

Braeden patted Isaac’s shoulders before turning around to leave. Theo thanked Derek for his swift action and his efficient managing of the situation and then also left. Scott and Isaac remained in the office, but Derek dismissed them with a grunt, warning Isaac that he was still suspended for the day.

“Well, that was unexpected,” Scott whistled when the door slid shut behind them, but Isaac did not look up. “Hey, I, er… Are you okay, Isaac? I’d like to think of us as friends. You can count on me.”

Isaac sighed and before he could think it through, he threw himself into Scott, wrapping his arms around his chest and resting his head on the captain’s shoulder. Scott was taken by surprise, but he was never one to deny someone a hug, so he put his arms around Isaac’s shoulders and squeezed gently.

A few seconds later, Isaac pulled away, his eyes red but dry, and his face unexpectedly serene with resignation.

“I know I can, Scott. That’s the painful truth,” he said, although the captain did not seem to get the reason behind his choice of words. “But I’m okay, I think. I think I am really getting there.”

**~ * ~**

Isaac spent the rest of the day in his pod, mostly because Derek had sent him there to cool off.

He was royally pissed with himself, which meant that he basically paced around his cabin all day, alternating between biting his nails and biting his lip. Isaac had to put the framed photographs he had of his family and the Hewitts facing down, because he did not deserve having two happy families looking at him at that moment. He should know better than getting into fights, and not just simply because he was under review for a permit to visit Earth. Why had he fallen into his old pattern? Why had he allowed himself to get drunk? What was he thinking? Isaac groaned loudly.

He was no longer the troubled kid who got into fights whenever he had a chance, Isaac thought as he lay on the floor with his feet on the bed. Derek and Braeden and the Hewitts had never given up on him, and this is how he repaid them? By falling back to his old ways? That Theo was a prick was not an excuse; it did not mean that he should punch his face in, no matter how much he reminded him of his father. That Scott had chosen Allison over him because he had been a coward and never dared tell Scott how he felt did not justify his shitty behaviour or his skiving. And what about Brett? The one unexpected person who had landed in his life, who was caring and undeservingly loving, and who made Isaac feel warm and fuzzy _things_ inside; and Isaac snapped and yelled at him?

His buzzer notified him of an incoming call. Isaac saw it was Mason, but he was not in the mood. He declined the call, adding one more disappointment to his long list of failures. Ten years on, and his father was still right: he was a failure.

A few hours later he got a message from Erica, who had just returned from touring the drilling substations and demanded to talk to him. He knew that he would not be able to avoid her, and he only replied because otherwise she would turn up at his door. Isaac answered with a few laconic lines and promised to go and see her in the afternoon before collapsing in bed, hiding under the covers.

Later that evening, Isaac was sat on the corner of his pod, eating crumbled cheese crackers that dried his mouth, when his bell rang. He rolled his eyes and cleaned the crumbs off of his shirt, but then the bell rang again.

 _Right_.

Isaac stood up, ready to start a yelling match with Erica, and in a few strides, he was already by the door.

“Erica, I swear to space; what the f—oh?”

But the door slid open, and rather than a short, blonde, angry planetologist there was a tall, blond, worried, blue-eyed mechanic.

“Erm… hi, Isaac,” Brett sheepishly said. He then put forward a box, and Isaac was too stunned to object, so he took it. “I’m very sorry for barrelling here, but I was worried about you. Seriously. I’m terribly sorry if I’ve upset you and… Anyways, I brought you these?”

Isaac looked down into the box, which was full of chocolate bars and cartons of juice, just like the ones they shared during their morning breaks whenever they were on the _Melissa_. He felt like crying, because he definitely did not deserve that.

“Brett…”

“I know it’s silly, but we can always have a chat over juice and chocolate, right?” he suggested with a smile.

Isaac pursed his lips, trying not to smile back, and sighed. “Why are you here? I’ve been a dick to you.”

“Yeah, well, you have. And I really should be angry because you’ve been very unfair,” he said dryly, although not judgmental.

Isaac had been very unfair, there was no point denying, which was probably why his stomach sunk when Brett said it aloud. The engineer lowered his eyes, not in the mood for more people disappointed in him.

“I’m sorry, Brett. I really mean it. I want to apologise because I’ve been a prick, and you don’t deserve it. And don’t worry, I’ll get Greenberg to work on the _Melissa_ and you won’t have to deal with me again.”

“Wait, no,” Brett said as he put his hands up, as if asking a few more minutes from Isaac. “Listen to me carefully, because I don’t know how else I can get this into that thick skull of yours,” he waited until Isaac was paying attention and then smiled. “I _like_ you, Isaac, and I want to know you better. And, right now? I am worried about you, because there is clearly a lot going on in your head, and it’s not only about Scott.”

Isaac felt his cheeks burn and the pit in his stomach deepen at these words. He wanted to ask Brett to stop, but there was a knot in his throat that did not let him speak, so he looked at the chocolates and the juice boxes instead. Had it been someone else, they could have just been angry, but he could not be angry at Brett when at that moment it was all his own fault.

“Why don’t you let people through? Why the fight yesterday?” he added in a kinder tone, offering the small, soft smile that Isaac had first seen on the mechanic. “No matter what you think, you know we can always talk?”

 _But talking does not fix things. Talking will not make my dad’s voice go away, and it will not stop my heart aching when I see Scott. Talking won’t matter anymore when you get on your ship and go and return and go again._ Isaac wanted to say all those things, but the lump in his throat would not let him.

It was then that Brett took the box away from Isaac’s hands. With his left hand he put the box on the floor, but with the right one he gingerly grasped Isaac’s fingers. The Uranian felt a bolt of lightning running through him when they touched.

“I don’t know what else to say or do…” Brett concluded, and Isaac really wanted to believe him. He really wanted to think that it would work.

_I’m not ready. Not yet. I can’t. It’s not going to work. I don’t deserve this._

Isaac had to use all of his will power to draw his hands away.

“I know, I’m sorry,” he snorted an apology, because that was how fucked up he was: that not even when a guy came to help him, could he allow himself to have that. “It’s just… I can’t. Not yet?” he concluded with a half-hearted question, like a secret self-torture, hoping that Brett would not give up on him entirely. “Good night Brett.”

And like the coward he was, Isaac stepped back into his cabin and slid the door shut without looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, ok, I know, and I'm sorry! Brett has been his usual golden boy self, and Isaac... well, the poor lad's been through a lot recently, you need to understand where he's coming from. But at least he's accepted that he has moved on from Scott? That's always good. And he has punched Theo, which always cheers me up. 
> 
> But things can't get any worse, right? Surely from now on it's all going to be easy for the boys? (short answer yes; long answer, yes, *but*)
> 
> And thank you so much everyone for sticking around! Your comments make my day (much needed seeing that were now fully locked down again!)


	9. Deucalion's Den

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isaac explained everything in one uninterrupted and mostly-coherent go. He explained about Brett, about their mutual banter, about their breaks for chocolate, about how he made him feel, about how he snapped, and about how he had screwed it up.
> 
> OR: Isaac decides to finally do something about Brett, while Theo and Liam get together.

_The verse echoes in his head, and he opens his eyes._

Far beyond the snows of Titan…

_Isaac is trapped in an ice shoot. Again. He knows this particular one very well, because it is the same one his father used to shove him in back on Oberon. To make things worse, he is in his old pressurised outsuit, but this time it smells heavily of ozone, like the air of the Chimera, and Isaac has to fight back an urge to vomit, because that is the last thing you want to do in an outsuit. But he has to be there because Derek has sent him to reach the broken drill that he had dropped down the shaft._

_“What kind of clumsy grease monkey are you, Isaac?” His father’s voice asks. “You had to kill my wife, you had to scare my son away, and now you have to risk the colony? Will you ever do something right?”_

_“I’m sorry Derek,” Isaac mumbles. “I will fix it.”_

_“You can’t fix this,” Scott says in an accusing tone from behind him. Isaac tries to turn, but his shoulders are stuck in the narrow shaft. He begins to pant as Scott continues speaking. “You broke this out of spite. Because I would never choose you.”_

…our only prize was dearth _, the song echoes again._

_“I can fix it! I- I- I can, Scott!”_

_“You can’t fix anything.” Theo’s mockery rumbles in the shaft, and the floor under Isaac’s feet gives way, but he does not fall because he is trapped in the narrowing shoot. “But you might as well stay there. We don’t want you to get hurt, do we?”_

_Isaac begins to whimper, not knowing if it was Theo or his father who speaks to him now._

_“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’ll fix it!” Isaac tries to punch the ice and the frozen soil, but he is trapped, and does not have enough room to swing his arm. His pulse now pounds loudly in his ears. “Get me out, please. Out… Get me out!”_

_“But you don’t want to get out,” a familiar voice calls from above. Isaac manages to look up and sees Brett leaning down, extending his arm down, reaching for him. “Why don’t you let me help you, Isaac? What else do I need to do?”_

_The lights go out. Behind him, the door of his cabin has just shut close._

_“I just wanted to help, Isaac. Because I like you.”_

_Isaac drops the box of chocolate bars and cartons of juice he had just been holding and turns on his heels. He presses his palm on the lock, cursing at the slowness of the door._

_“Wait, Brett! Hold on…”_

Let’s return back through the darkness…

_Then the door opens, and when Isaac looks out, he can only see the Melissa taking off Beacon H. In his pyjamas, outside the airlock, and with the air leaving his lungs, Isaac can only feel his skin freezing solid in outer space._

_And just as the Melissa manoeuvres away from the station, Isaac curses at his frozen jaws and his airless lungs. No matter how hard he tries, the only words he wants to say will not come out of his mouth. Frozen and perfectly spherical tears float away from his eyes._

_“Wait! Brett, wait for me. Please…”_

…to the cool, green hills of Earth!

**~ * ~**

Isaac yelled himself awake. Once he calmed down and his heart was not trying to punch through his chest, he sat up. He was covered in sweat and he had kicked all the bed covers to the floor. The lights had automatically turned on, and the AI notified him that he had had a strong emotional response to a sleep disorder and was enquiring about the need to alert the on duty medical officer. The engineer told the AI where it could shove its suggestion.

He then asked the AI to call Mason.

“What’s wrong?” Mason said with no small amount of alarm in his half-sleepy voice. “Is it mom?”

“Er… no, Mason. Sorry to wake you up,” Isaac waved shyly, still sitting in bed but now wrapping the sheets around his shoulders.

“Isaac, it’s half-past four. What in Oort is going on?”

“Nothing really… ‘twas just a nightmare.”

“Oh...” Mason rubbed his eyes and the holoprojection shimmered for a second. “Are you okay? You hadn’t had one in, erm… years now?”

When Isaac first boarded on the _Talia_ his body was still in shock and programmed not to react during the night, because waking his father up never ended up well for him. But, with time, his mind had loosened up its grip enough, and then the nightmares had started, which Mrs Hewitt assured him were a far healthier response. It took Isaac months of reassurance before he stopped feeling guilty about waking Mason or his parents up every other night, and that had actually helped with his nightmares.

Whenever he had one, Mason woke up and sat with him in bed. Sometimes Isaac felt like talking about the nightmare. Some others he did not. Mason never pried, but was always happy to talk about anything else until they fell asleep again.

“Yesterday I got into a fight,” Isaac admitted.

“ _Isaac_!”

Isaac went on to explain all that had happened in the last couple of days, since they last spoke when he went to the Hewitts for lunch the day just before he got in the fight.

“Well,” Mason said in a low voice as he walked out of bed to let Corey sleep. “I can see where your nightmare is coming from. But you hadn’t told me what was going on between you and Brett. I mean, I had guessed, but thanks for telling me.”

“Yeah, well, sorry for that, but not the point,” Isaac walked around the pod, still wrapped in the sheets.

“Oh, no, you idiotic asteroid. That is the entire point. You don’t get to throw that at me and then ignore it!”

“No, Mason, I have a plan.”

“You? A plan… What plan?”

“A no-no to ship mechanics plan,” Isaac muttered as he walked to get a glass of water. “The _NShMP_ ,” he mouthed after drinking a long gulp.

“He brought you an entire box of chocolate!” Mason said in disbelief. “The last time Corey brought me sweets he had eaten half of them on the way.”

“You’re meant to help me with my nightmare. Not kick me into the airlock.”

“That’s it. I’m taking the next hopper back.”

“Don’t do that… What about Corey?”

“Oh, believe me,” Mason said as he visibly typed something on his buzzer. “He’ll be the first one kicking me on that hopper when he hears about this. Tell me more about Brett, because all I know is that he’s from Ceres and he’s a mechanic.”

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter anymore because I totally fucked things up with him.”

“I’m sure—”

“No, Mason. You didn’t see how he looked at me yesterday. Yet again,” Isaac rolled his eyes as he snorted a laugh, “I’m a massive disappointment.”

“You are not a disappointment,” Mason said with a sad voice. His foster brother had really regressed almost ten years, to the days when he was still terrified of his father and, paradoxically, almost crippled by fears of abandonment. “Why don’t you spend a couple of nights with mom and dad? You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I better get used to it, seeing I push everyone away…”

“Enough of that. You know that’s not true.”

“Wanna go through my record?” the engineer scoffed. “Nolan, Gabe, Scott. That’s it. And now Brett.”

“He came back for you. He told you he likes you. What in space is wrong with that curly Uranian head of yours?”

“Because he’ll go and find himself someone else,” Isaac muttered as he dragged his feet back into bed. The ‘like they all do’ part floating unsaid but clearly implied.

“You don’t know that!” Mason needed all his will power not to shout at his stubborn brother. “You still have until the _Melissa_ leaves to change his mind. Just ask him?”

That was something that Isaac knew, but it had taken Mason to put it in front of him like that for Isaac to reconsider. His stomach did a funny flip and his heart began to pump loudly. Maybe it was not too late after all?

**~ * ~**

“Not _once_ in the four years of this partnership has something so unacceptable happened!” Lydia yelled with scaringly contained fury. Even so, Derek seemed to recoil. The most terrifying thing was that she did not have to raise her voice at all after that. Her single burst had already set the tone for the rest of the meeting.

The station steering committee had convened in an extraordinary meeting requested by Lydia with her Mars Political Commissioner for the Kuiper Belt hat. Derek and Hayden both had feared this moment since they found out about the problems in the outer drilling stations and the consequent delays in the tholin cargos, but they both had hoped it would have taken a bit longer.

“Ms Martin,” Hayden said with forced calm as she laced her hands to keep them from balling into fists. “I don’t know if you are familiar with the technicalities of tholin mining,” and then she turned to her left.

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” Isaac was quick to put his hands up. “Don’t throw me in there. This has nothing to do with me.”

“No, but maybe the station’s planetologist has something to add?” Hayden cocked her head with a treacherous smile.

When Erica heard the administrator refer to her in such a tone, as if she were not even there, the blonde stood up and pushed her chair back.

“This is how it’s going to be, eh?” her eyes threw daggers. “Okay, fair game, let’s—”

“Let’s not,” Derek interrupted before they had to evacuate the meeting room.

“I do not need a lecture on orbital mining,” Lydia agreed. “And I don’t want excuses. I want _explanations_ and I want _solutions_.”

“There is very little we can do, Commissioner Martin,” Hayden insisted with exasperation. “The cargo ships are not here, and it is not as if we store tholins on the station. There are such things as technical problems, they happen all the time, and cannot be foreseen. Isn’t your ship grounded anyways? It’s not as if you could take off tomorrow.”

All the heads turned to look at Isaac, and this time the Chief of Engineering had no way of avoiding the question. Especially because his answer was not going to satisfy any of the two opposing parties.

“Okay,” he said slowly, dragging the vowels, “the _Melissa_ is docked with multiple failures, but none of them are serious enough for me to force it to stay if they sign the waiver. The ship is fit to fly,” Isaac insisted. “But I would recommend a serious and thorough check out whenever they are not in a hurry.”

The three scariest women Isaac had ever known were in that room right now with him, and two of them were actively hating his guts at that very second.

Lydia narrowed her eyes for a few seconds before speaking again. “This reflects very badly on the outer rim colonies.”

“Welcome to the frontier,” Hayden snarled, now clearly trying to antagonise Lydia. Derek turned crimson, and one of his eyebrows began to twitch. “We are not an AU away from the Prime Planet, we haven’t got seasons. Here everything is very far away, and believe me when I say that we are doing miracles like nobody has seen since the glory days of the original colonies.”

That was a weird and archaic way of putting it, Isaac thought (not even on Uranus, where they were more conservative with their language, did they use Prime Planet anymore), but it was true. Everything out there was more difficult than on the inner planets: in the outer rim they had no massive planets with millions of people or sufficient gravitational pull; they did not even have a warming sun. The outer rim of the Kuiper Belt had planetoids with centuries-long orbits and the unknown and desolate gaseous vastness of the Oort Cloud behind them.

“Commissioner Martin,” Isaac surprised everyone by speaking aloud. “I know it’s not ideal, but your ship really needs this downtime. Waiting for the cargoes is giving us enough time to fix the _Melissa’s_ problems.”

The meeting room held its collective breath as Lydia pondered on this. The wait seemed to drag for minutes, even if it was only a couple of seconds.

“I am setting a deadline,” she decided. “Considering the relative position of Neptune and Uranus right now I guess we can wait for two more weeks before out trip is irreversibly delayed,” she added in a gracious tone, like a king of Terran myths commuting a sentence. “But be warned that two weeks from today we will leave regardless, and if those cargo ships are not here you will have shiploads worth of volatile tholins waiting and a very unimpressed report for the Mars Council.”

With that, and without waiting for either Derek or Hayden to call the meeting to an end, she stood up and turned around to leave.

“Mr Lahey, if you could please accompany me? I’d like to have some words…” she added before the door slid shut behind her. Isaac looked at Derek, who had turned purple in anger. Hayden was equally shocked, so the Chief of Engineering rolled up his computer and made his way out before the Terran Commander erupted.

“Commissioner Martin?” Isaac asked once he was out, walking down the steps of the Admin block.

“Oh, Isaac, great to see you,” she said with an unexpected smile. She saw Isaac’s confused face and she took his arm as she shook her head. “Don’t worry about that. It was more about making a point than anything else. I like your scarf, by the way,” she added casually as she walked them towards the _Melissa_.

“Oh, thanks. But you’re not going to report us to the Mars Council, then?” Isaac asked tentatively, already playing the scenario in his head in case it affected his Earth application.

“Relax,” she chuckled. “The Mars Council is not going to change its opinion on the Outer Colonies based on a technical problem. Mind you, Derek also knows that, but he’s too far up his derrière to remember.”

“And you still want me fixing your ship?” Isaac asked next. “Only that I’m not sure if Captain McCall or Mr Talbot will be happy for me to go back in there. I can get my assistant and—”

“Ah, yes, I think Scott finally put all the pieces together…”

At that, Isaac stopped dead in his tracks. He began to stammer an unintelligible mumble as all the colour drained off of his face, but Lydia put her hands on his elbows, and that shook him enough to listen.

“Isaac, we all knew. Trust me, Scott was the only one who didn’t. And when yesterday he came back and mentioned what you told him after the hearing with that very unpalatable captain, Malia and I sat him down for a chat.”

“Effing Oort…”

“He does not think less of you, I’ve told you already,” she said with a kind smile. Around them, people walked up and down the Avenue, paying them no attention. Isaac got lost in the hubbub of the colony as he tried to assimilate that Scott had only just learnt about his feelings. “Even now that he knows.”

 _Well, too fucking late_.

“Please do not tell any of this to Brett?” was the only thing Isaac could think of now, because there was no way in space that would end up well.

“Brett?” she asked with an arched brow and a tone that Isaac disapproved of.

“Not a word,” Isaac insisted, his face hardening this time, because he meant it. He had barely survived the heartache and the embarrassment of his non-relationship with Scott; the last thing he needed was Brett to find out, decide that he was just a rebound and definitely put an end to whatever had been happening. “I am serious Lydia, that’s the last thing I need. I don’t want Brett to—”

“That’s okay,” Lydia said closing her eyes and an idea firmly set in her mind. “Say no more.”

**~ * ~**

Mason and Lydia’s combined encouragements put enough fire in Isaac’s belly. He went on the _Melissa_ with all the intent to continue the repairing, avoid Scott at all costs, and try to get Brett to listen to what he had to say. Not that he knew exactly what he was going to say, but that was a hurdle for later – he first needed to find out if the mechanic was still interested.

As a result, the moment Isaac crossed the airlock, he was as tense as the cable of a pneumalink.

“Hey,” Isaac asked as he bit his lip once he was down in the corridor where he and Brett had been working. The Ceresian mechanic was kneeling on the floor, where he had plugged his omnitool to one of the pipes painted in red while monitoring a new beep on the holoplan projection. “How… erm… Everything okay?”

Brett looked up, and Isaac felt a cold pulsating sensation in his gut when he saw that the mechanic was looking at him with a harsh wary expression.

“I have realigned these pipes, and I think this fixes the phased response of the starboard flaps,” Brett replied in a carefully neutral tone, which Isaac knew did not bode well.

“Aham. Then shall I just continue with the port hydraulic link?”

“You’re the boss,” Brett replied as he turned back to his holoprojection. “You know best.”

Isaac gingerly walked past Brett towards his work station, and took his time opening his toolbox and unrolling his semi-gel computer. He kept looking at the Ceresian as he did this, in case he looked back at him and gave him any indication of where they stood. The night before Brett had told him he liked him, but Isaac had basically shut his door on his nose. Isaac would have been angry if the tables had been turned, and a part of him had hoped that Brett was cross, because that would make it easier. In that scenario Isaac would not have to put his thoughts into words because a shove, a punch and a couple of shouts would have solved their impasse for good. This impersonal, cold shoulder he was getting was definitely worse.

“Brett?” Isaac asked after clearing his throat. The mechanic turned around and gave him an unimpressed grey glare, so different from his usual small side-smile and his welcoming blue eyes. “Are we ok?”

Brett took a couple of seconds before turning around to his tools again. “You tell me. You’re the one who wanted time.”

Isaac definitely did not like being at the other end of his own words. He was too ashamed to answer, and there were too many thoughts clouding his head. After a few seconds of tense silence, Brett began to calibrate something with his clicker. Sensing that his chance to say something had gone, Isaac frowned and turned back to his own work.

The morning passed awkwardly and in silence. Isaac never found an occasion to start a serious conversation, and he was dismayed to see that not once did Brett glance in his direction like he used to. That was why just before their break (when Scott usually came down), Isaac stood up and mumbled an excuse before walking briskly out of the ship. The engineer walked out to the canteen to get them something nice for their break, hoping that would give him a chance to restart the conversation. Not that chocolate bars and juice cartons were not good, but Isaac needed to apologise and up his game, so he needed something fancier.

He was walking back to the _Melissa_ hoping Brett liked the peach pastries he had bought (Isaac was never one to brag, but they grew their own peaches in the hydroponics bay), when he saw something that forced him to stop, almost dropping his sweet cargo. Sitting by the airlock he saw Liam talking with Theo.

“I knew out in the rim the stars shone brighter, but I was not expecting to see one so close,” the Saturnian said with his stupid accent, his annoying smile, and his unnerving dimples, and Liam genuinely blushed.

“You’re such an asteroid,” Liam giggled. Properly _giggled_.

_Oh my Earth, this is unbelievable. I’m going to be sick._

“You say that,” Theo continued relentlessly. “But it’s true, Liam. I’m so happy we have coincided here on this station. Did I tell you I very nearly did not come here? Just imagine! I would have never had a chance to meet you. You know the ancients talked about fate?”

 _That is definitely one way to do it, though_ , Isaac thought to himself.

Liam shrugged with a goofy smile as he gently grabbed Theo’s hand in his, and Isaac saw Theo squeezing it back. He must have stood there staring, though, because Liam looked at him long enough for Theo to notice.

“Hey, Isaac,” the Saturnian captain said as he turned around. Isaac noticed that both kept their fingers laced together and saw Liam scoot closer so that their shoulders were brushing together.

“Hey, you two,” he replied slowly, as if his brain were still trying to process what he had seen. _Oh, Oort – who’s going to tell Hayden?_

“What have you got there?” Liam asked, nodding at his box.

“Oh, just breakfast,” the Uranian admitted. “I did not feel like raiding the supplies of the _Melissa_ , even if I really like your Rocker grub.”

“Oh, maybe we should get some,” Liam suggested with a big smile. “Shall we?”

“Sure!” Theo agreed with a warm smile. Seeing him like that with Liam made him less of a ringtard, Isaac thought. _But he is still one._

“If you go to the canteen, ask for the peach pastries,” Isaac found himself suggesting, still in shock. “Tell them to give you the warm ones.”

“Thanks for the recommendation, Isaac!”

As they walked off Theo gave him a genuine warm smile that for a brief second made him look like a nice guy. For an instant, Isaac wondered if he had misjudged him, and he heard Mason’s voice telling him to give him the benefit of the doubt, but then Isaac remembered. He had not overreacted. Theo had put his dirty Saturnian hands on him. _Twice_. He might have apologised, and he might be all Gaser charm with everyone else, but Isaac was still convinced there was something dodgy about him.

Shame about Liam, though; he was a really nice guy.

“I brought us this,” Isaac announced with a small voice when he walked back into the corridor of the _Melissa_ , still processing the sight of Liam and Theo canoodling. Brett said nothing, and simply stood up and cleaned his hand with the rag that he kept in his back pocket. “You said we can always talk over chocolate and juice, but I thought I could try something else today?”

Brett walked over to Isaac with the same blank expression and had a quick glance at the contents of the box.

“That looks fancy,” Brett stated flatly, without making any attempts to grab one of the pastries, and clearly not in the mood to talk.

“Yeah, well, they are. They are hundred-percent Koop peaches. We grow them here…” Isaac scratched the back of his head with one hand while offering the box with the sweets with the other. Brett looked up into Isaac’s eyes and arched an eyebrow.

“I’m not that hungry,” he said after a second, and Isaac felt an ache inside and a lump in his throat.

“I’m sorry,” Isaac blurted just as the Ceresian was turning away. “I’m sorry _again_. These are my ‘I’m sorry’ treats. Please?”

“Do you buy many of these?” the mechanic pointed with a finger, but still showing no intention of grabbing one.

“I’m quite bad at apologising. Sweets always work better,” he offered with a strained smile.

Brett stood there, analysing Isaac, and the engineer could see the cogs turning behind Brett’s blue eyes. Then, the Ceresian’s expression softened. It was only a fraction, but Isaac was happy to take that and hold on to that slither of hope. Brett reached into the box and pulled out the two pastries. He took a big bite out of one and hesitated for a second about what to do about the other one. Isaac waited without moving.

“It’s very good,” Brett said with a full mouth. “You should apologise more often,” he concluded with the tiniest smile before turning around and going back to his corner with both pastries.

**~ * ~**

The rest of his shift was still odd, despite the brief moment of real acknowledgement they shared during their break. There was no open hostility, and Brett had accepted the Pastry of Apology (actually, he had taken both of them and had left Isaac without one), but it had been a tense and quiet day nonetheless. Isaac had not really spoken, because he was not sure what to say, fearing that anything he said might be the wrong thing to say, but waiting for Brett to say anything had been excruciating. When the time to pack up and go home came, Isaac said a quick goodbye and left, not wanting to deal with the awkwardness any longer. The moment he was out of the _Melissa_ he sent a quick message to Erica.

**_ILAHEY:_ ** _Deucalion’s Den. 15 min?_

_**EREYES:** WHAT HAVE YOU DONE????_

_**ILAHEY:** I need a chat. And a drink._

_**EREYES:** Because that always works._

_**ILAHEY:** That’s why you’re coming xx._

_**ILAHEY:** Bring Boyd._

_**EREYES:** Don’t make me regret this._

Deucalion’s Den was an unofficial bar at the Oort end of Block B1. It had been originally a large space for neighbourhood events, but Deucalion (a veteran Koop pilot) took it over and turned it into a more active local meeting point away from the Communal Block (which meant away from passing visitors and crews) when he went blind. Derek tolerated it because dismantling it would have caused more trouble than it was worth, and because Deucalion had actually paid for a license.

The Den was big enough to fit four or five tables where Deucalion served a selection of drinks and one dish of the day. How a blind man cooked was a colony-wide mystery, and the old pilot would never let anyone help him, but Isaac knew that the biotic lenses he had over his damaged eyes allowed him to see enough to get by.

Isaac sat down at one of the stools and was immediately surprised by a firm hand landing on his shoulder and feeling his clothes.

“Ah, Chief of Engineering,” Deucalion always recognised him by his scarf. “Dinner for three as usual?”

“You know us well,” Isaac smiled, and the blind man walked behind the bar to get three bowls of whatever stew he had and three glasses of hooch. By the time Deucalion had put all on the bar, Erica and Boyd were already there.

“I hope this is going to be an explanation as to why you got into a fight,” Erica said as she sat down. “Because it has been years since you’ve been in this kind of trouble. And why did we have to find out through Braeden?”

“I know,” Isaac had seen this coming, but it was still hard to be reminded of his regression, so he hung his head and avoided to look into Erica’s eyes.

“You damn well know, because—”

“Erica,” Boyd calmed her down. “Why don’t you let him speak?”

“Are you going to talk today, Isaac? Because you’ve been so far up your arse that you probably can’t—”

“ _Erica_ ,” Boyd insisted and though the planetologist huffed, she did shut up to drink her hooch and let Isaac explain himself.

“He’s an annoying ringtard and I hate his _guts_ and he-” Isaac held his breath for a second and clenched his fist. He let out the air slowly. “He was all unapologetic and he put a hand on me,” he concluded. That was not a real excuse, but both Erica and Boyd at least could understand Isaac’s reaction.

“Let’s ignore him,” Boyd said, and the three friends seemed to all calm down. “But Isaac, we know that we did not come here just for dinner.”

“Talk to us, Isaac,” Erica insisted, clearly still angry but at least now willing to listen. “We really thought you were moving on from Scott?”

“It’s not about Scott,” Isaac turned around to stare at his stew. Finest mackerel from the <1G pisciculture bays of Beacon H out of season was _definitely_ contraband. “There’s this other guy.”

Erica almost spat her hooch.

“But we are over Scott then?” Boyd asked tentatively, wanting to make sure that chapter was done with.

“Yeah, I s’pose… We had a chat?” Isaac pushed his food around with his spork as it cooled down. “We had a moment or something. It hurt, but I am happy with where we’ve left it.”

“Where do we stand on dumping a bucket of bilge water on that Martian girl then?” Erica needed clarification.

“Save it just in case,” Isaac humoured her, and Boyd and Erica relaxed a fraction.

“To dump on this new mysterious guy?”

“I think you’ll need to dump it on me.”

Erica and Boyd leaned further on the bar to have a better look at Isaac, who was still busy stirring his stew and avoiding all eye contact.

Eventually, he spoke.

Isaac explained everything in one uninterrupted and mostly-coherent go. He explained about Brett, about their mutual banter, about their breaks for chocolate, about how he made him feel, about how he snapped, and about how he had screwed it up. He also told them that he had no intention to do anything about him, because he was on the _Melissa_ which meant that he was around Scott and that, like Scott himself did, he would eventually leave, and Isaac did not want to go through all that again.

“And still… Still I think I could try?”

“Please tell me Mason knows about this already?” Boyd asked with worry. He had met Brett a couple of times, but had not seen him and Isaac together. Suddenly he felt like he should have been there.

“Yes, he does,” Isaac snorted and Boyd sighed.

“What did he say?” Erica wanted to know.

“He told me that I should go for it,” Isaac shrugged as he had a spoonful of his meal, which had by now gone cold.

“But?”

“Is it going to be the same story all over again, though? That is, mind you, if he is still interested _at all_.”

“You were a frozeball,” Erica pointed out.

“I understand his reaction,” Boyd commented after a sip of his drink. “The guy came to you and put his heart out there and you chickened out.”

“You two have a very weird way of being supportive,” Isaac turned around to meet his friends’ unimpressed glares.

“Earth, Isaac! I hope one day you finally accept that you matter to us,” Erica huffed in frustration, making Isaac chuckle. “This abandoned space orphan routine is really getting old.”

Her words were harsh, but she put her hand on Isaac’s knee at the same time, and despite the instinct to flinch, the Uranian allowed himself a little human touchy-feely comfort.

“My point is that you hurt him, and you cannot expect him to be understanding all the time. Having said that,” Boyd quickly added as Isaac’s shoulders sagged, “if he is only half the decent guy your Venus goggles make him seem, he will forgive you.”

“You’ve only met him for a few minutes.”

“And that’s how good an impression I got.”

“But what am I going to tell him anyways? How do I convince him I’m not just a broken Icer?”

“Isaac, nobody that really knows you thinks that. Maybe you should let him get to know you better?”

Isaac groaned and focused back on his dinner.

“Don’t give up just yet,” Erica insisted. “Take tonight to think about what you want to tell him. You’ve already apologised, so you can only wait until he is ready.”

“And if he doesn’t come over, then you won’t have to worry about him anymore,” Boyd underlined. “It will hurt, but you haven’t built up your hopes for years. You’re stronger than that, and you’ll get over it.”

“Yeah, alone…”

“We’ll get Deucalion to bring one of his nephews over. Isn’t that right, Deucalion?”

The blind barman walked over to their end of the bar drying his hands on the cloth he carried on his shoulder. The former pilot always heard everything that was said in his bar, but he never spoke a word about it. He and his bar had a reputation to uphold.

“Ethan and Aiden?”

“Yeah, those two hunks. Where are they now?”

“They are still racing. I think they won the Enceladus Glaciers Challenge last year.”

“They’ll love to meet our Isaac, won’t they?”

“At least one of them won’t mind,” Deucalion chuckled.

“There you go,” Erica concluded, and Isaac could only shake his head and smile. “We’ll get you a rich and famous Koop who will buy you a house on Earth.”

“But try with that mechanic of yours first,” Boyd added. “Just remember to relax and _talk_.”

**~ * ~**

Isaac went to the Hewitts’ cabin to spend the night. He told them that he had had nightmares again, and that was all his foster parents needed to know. He stayed in the bedroom he used to share with Mason, and managed to get a full night’s sleep. In the morning he woke up early to grab breakfast from the canteen and left Boyd a note on his workbench saying that he would be in the hydroponics bay that morning.

The hydroponics bays were six large compounds stacked between the core and the axis of Beacon H. Together with the pisciculture bays, they were the main source of food for the station. Because of their position, they had very little rotation, which meant that they had a very low gravity. This allowed the plants to grow larger and more spherical than they did in places with proper gravity.

In the bay, floating through the fruit trees and the never-ending soil-less rows of corn and vegetables, Isaac always found some peace. Whenever he was there, under the warm UV lights, he liked to imagine that he was on Earth, just like he did when he played space explorers with Jackson back on Oberon.

The first thing he did once he stepped out of the airlock was to check the crops programmed for harvest that week. The bay’s AI guided him towards the section with rows of juicy and plump tomatoes, and he pinched a peach as he made sure that the agrobots were all working fine (unsurprisingly, Boyd had kept them spotless and perfectly tuned).

Once the job side of his visit to the bay was done, Isaac let himself float over to his hive. Space honeybees were designed to pollinate the crops of space stations during the very earliest days of the Space Age. They were the size of a thumb but extremely docile, and in low gravity they built spherical hives almost a metre across, with ring upon ring of cells full of honey. His job description as Chief of Engineering did not include colony beekeeper, but Isaac had to step up for the role a few years ago and had enjoyed it too much. He secretly wanted to believe that his hive recognised him because not once had he been stung, although this he only said to Derek, because only Terran bees still had actual stingers.

Seeing that the skep was not ready for harvest, he floated off to the compartment where he hid his secret stash of honey and pulled out a jar. Floating on that corner and after a good couple of hours of blissful peace and calm in the greenery, Isaac’s mind returned to his pivotal thought of the week.

“What in Oort am I going to do about Brett?” he asked to the bees, but they just buzzed around with their pollinating business, not giving him an answer.

He dug his spoon into the jar and stuck it, all covered in honey, into his mouth.

Floating in the warm and humid greenery with his bees and tasting the sweet, sticky honey, Isaac found the calm mood to think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not that evil. This chapter demonstrates it. Ethan and Aiden mays till appear later in the fic?
> 
> And, everyone: hold on to your hats for next week's chapter! (dun-dun-dunnnn!!!)


	10. Penny for your thoughts?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I really like you, Isaac,” Brett said, trying to be helpful, and making Isaac’s smile widen. “And I think that you like me?”
> 
> OR: Isaac is floating in the hydroponics bay, then Brett interrupts his thoughts.

_I can do this. I should give it a try. He has always been reasonable. And he likes me! No more ‘what-if’s. You can go and tell him. Just like you were going to do with Scott—don’t let that accumulated courage go to waste. But I was so sure about Scott? And how come Brett is so sure about liking me? And does it matter?_

Isaac was so busy thinking and pepping himself with what Mason and Boyd and Erica had told him, that he completely missed the hissing noise of the airlock opening and the ping of the lift.

"Hey,” a voice that Isaac knew well and that belonged to someone he was hoping to avoid for the time being, echoed cheerfully in the hydroponics bay.

“Brett?” Isaac was surprised to see the Ceresian there, slowly floating towards his hiding spot. “What are you doing here? And how did you find me?”

“Well, I walked into your workshop today, hoping to see you and Mr Boyd told me where to find you.”

“He did _what_?”

“He told me to look behind the main cross girders in Bay 4, which is where you come to hide. He also told me you’d have your hand stuck in a jar of honey?”

Two large bees buzzed in between them and Isaac very slowly licked his spoon clean and put the lid back on the jar.

“Well… I didn’t have my hand stuck in a jar.”

“It was close enough,” Brett chuckled.

“How did you get in?” Isaac asked, knowing that the hydroponics bay was only for Level 2 station staff.

“He gave me this?” Brett, still floating and slowly rotating, showed him a holocard with a temporary pass.

There was an uncomfortable silence during which Isaac and Brett looked into each other’s eyes, Isaac still insecure about what to do or say, and Brett again offering a warm and patient smile.

“I’m sorry,” Isaac apologised again.

“Hey, no need to apologise again,” Brett said frankly with a shrug. “I ate your apology pastries, didn’t I?”

“One of those was for me,” Isaac furrowed his brow,

“You had lots to apologise for,” Brett winked before floating himself to the girder, so he was next to Isaac. “You were a dick, you were going through stuff and I was angry, but you apologised. All sorted, so we can move on. _I_ want to move on if you want too?”

Isaac was not sure if it was as simple as that, but the mechanic said it with such ease and confidence that he had to believe that Brett was giving him a second chance – like everyone seemed to have told him he would. He gave him a firm nod, even if he could not say a word.

“So, what do you do here?” Brett asked spinning slowly in the low gravity air, with his hands flat out, signalling the hydroponics bay. “I’ve never been in a hydroponics bay. Are they all so big?”

“Ha! You should have seen the ones around Oberon. We didn’t have any in the colony proper, because they were secondary outposts, but those were probably as big as Beacon H.”

“And are you the chief gardener?” Brett joked remembering how they had discussed this on the _Melissa_.

“I told you I am not a gardener,” Isaac chuckled. “It’s all heavily robotised, but I do have a small patch of hand-grown crops.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah,” Isaac smiled with a cocky grin as he unveiled one of his proudest achievements. “I actually grew the largest gourd this side of Saturn.”

Brett laughed out loud and would have floated away had he not been holding to the girder.

“Oh, Boyd warned me you would mention your prize-winning gourd.”

“He’s just jealous because his robots never achieve such horticultural wonders.”

“How big was it?”

“This big?” Isaac stretched his arms and moved his hands until he replicated the size of the King Courgette of Beacon H. “More or less. Plants grow larger here in low G.”

“I’m very impressed,” Brett admitted honestly, and Isaac blushed, a mixture of pride and a very welcomed sense of validation. “So you come here to keep an eye on the bees and grow championship veg?”

“Innerds are normally uncomfortable around bees,” Isaac pointed at one of the bees that flew around Brett twice before landing on him, deciding he was not a flower, and then taking off. “I’m surprised you’re so cool.”

“I don’t mind them, but they’re not really pets, are they? And have you seen their _faces_?”

Isaac huffed in mock indignation, making Brett laugh again.

“They don’t like you either.”

Brett noticed the ‘either’, but he was confident that Isaac said it only in jest. “Can I try some of that honey, though?”

“ _No?_ ” Isaac chuckled but he still handed the jar over to Brett. He most definitely did not do it to brush his fingers with Brett’s for a millisecond just so he would smile back at him.

Brett stuck his finger in the jar and licked the golden goo. “Hmmm! Do your bees also win Solar System honey championships?”

“Nah… this is just for Koops. But they are the furthest colony from the Sun.” Everything on Beacon H was the furthest _something_ from the Sun, but Isaac could not miss the chance to gloat about his bees.

“Oh, I’m honoured!”

“So you should. I think you’re one of the few inner planet people who has ever tried it,” Isaac smiled. Brett was looking at him so fondly that it made his stomach churn. The hydroponics bay was his secret hideout, and he had never shared it with anyone. Why did it feel so natural to have this moment with Brett there when he should be alarmed at the invasion of his privacy? “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“I admire how proud you are of this,” Brett said with honesty. “I really do. You really have achieved something with this. And I can see why you like coming here,” he said after a few seconds, as if he had been reading his mind. “It’s nice and cosy. Do you think Earth is like this?”

Isaac turned around to look at the apple and peach groves that covered that part of the bay. The trees grew off the large hydrotubes that ran across the cylindrical walls, shooting inwards towards the centre of the bay, forming a green canopy tunnel at the core while the trunks formed radiuses like the lift-shafts that linked the core with the ring. If anything, this place was diametrically opposed to Earth, where trees were meant to grow outwards into the sky. But the bay was full of colours (greens and browns, and reds and pinks) of natural hues usually not seen on colony stations. The air smelled different too, almost purer and more humid, and laden with the scent of leaves and flowers and nitrates and phosphates.

“Derek says it’s not really like this,” Isaac answered after a while. “Derek’s the station commander, but he’s an Arty, you know? I mean, he’s also moody and grouchy in general, but he told me once it was as close as you could get out here.”

“I’ve seen forests on Mars,” Brett added. “But they are very different trees to these. They are much taller too, with thicker barks and needle-like leaves. Apparently, they are trees that live in cold parts of Earth, but they were the tropical forests of Mars. Despite those forests of trees and bushes, and the grass and alpine prairies of the Martian highlands, I think this is closer to Earth.”

“Why?” Isaac wanted to know, but Brett seemed for a second lost in his thoughts as he looked at the lush greens of the hydroponics bay.

“Mars is not fully terraformed,” he explained. “The atmosphere is still thinner and colder and drier. It is beautiful, mind, but I don’t think it is like Earth.”

 _You’re beautiful_ , Isaac’s head shouted, but he had the good sense to filter that and stopped his mouth from blabbing. It was getting warmer though, but he was sure that nobody had adjusted the thermostat.

“It would need ruins in any case,” Isaac added helpfully, holding on to a girder to stop himself from hovering away.

“ _Ruins_?”

“Yeah, you know. The old collapsed reminders of the past? The traces of the original Terrans?”

“I’ve seen ruins on Mars,” Brett suddenly remembered with a smile. “There is a part of Mars which is cordoned off, which is where the first landing and the first colony were established. It’s an interesting visit.”

Isaac’s eyes opened wide with excitement, because a ruin of the original days of the Space Age was the most exciting thing his ten-year-old self could have ever conceived.

“ _Out ride the sons of Terra, far drives the thundering jet; Up leaps the race of Earthmen, out, far, and onward yet_ —”

“You really like that song, don’t you?” Brett chuckled as he pushed himself so that he was again by Isaac, scooting as close as he dared into the Uranian’s personal space.

“I don’t know what you heathen kids of the Belt learn, but we from Uranus take where we come from very seriously,” Isaac said with a haughty voice. “In the immortal words of Captain Bobby Finstock, greatest Hero of Uranus, ‘the bigger they are, the bigger the _are_ ’.”

Brett waited for a couple of seconds, expecting there to be a continuation to that line. But there wasn’t. “What does that even mean?”

“It’s Icer wisdom; we don’t expect simple innerds to understand,” Isaac shrugged his shoulders, trying to brush off the fact that nobody really knew what Bobby Finstock had meant when he said that.

Brett rolled his eyes and pushed himself away as Isaac chuckled, although he was dying inside because what he really wanted was to stretch his hand and grab Brett’s shirt to stop him from floating away. And that was precisely what he did.

“Wait,” Isaac smiled as he reached for Brett’s sleeve, holding it firmly. “Don’t float away just yet.”

“And where should I be floating then,” the Ceresian asked carefully.

“Just around here,” Isaac explained vaguely.

“Around _you_ perhaps?”

There was a tense pause. Isaac could still backpedal from this if he wanted to. But he did not want to. Brett was actually conscious enough to give him an escape if he so wanted. Isaac looked at Brett’s eyes and got lost in them. There were a billion thoughts buzzing in his head, busier than his bees in the bay. There were thoughts of Scott and of pain and abandonment, but there were also the encouraging voices of his friends. In the end, when he answered, he did so not because Erica or Mason had told him so, and not out of spite towards Scott, but because he truly believed that there could be something between him and Brett, something that would be good for him, and something that was worth trying.

“Yes,” Isaac said slowly, and he immediately saw Brett’s cautious grin turn into happiness. “Just stay around me.”

**~ * ~**

“What is it like to travel across the Solar System?” Isaac asked Brett, who was now floating right next to Isaac without any intention of flying away.

“I think you will be very disappointed with my answer,” Brett warned, but Isaac only rolled his eyes.

“I travelled to the Saturn system once, and the only other time I’ve been on a spaceship was to come here. I was _obsessed_ with being a space explorer when I was little,” he confessed. “Anything that you will tell me will be exciting.”

“Is that so?”

“Mason and I had that one thing in common and we never grew out of it, I guess. He’s Head of the Kuiper Observatory now,” Isaac noted. “And we can tell you how many days it takes Venus to orbit around the sun. But we’ve never been anywhere close!”

Isaac’s eyes were glowing with excitement, his childhood passion surfacing unhindered.

“Okay, well, erm… let’s start with Ceres then.”

Brett went on to explain what he had seen in his years as an itinerant mechanic. True, while on the _Melissa_ he had shared some stories with Isaac already, but this time it was different. This time Brett wanted to make an effort to describe what he saw and what he felt when he visited the main sites of the Solar System, even if he had only seen them from afar, because he knew that was what Isaac really wanted to know. He could see it in his eyes.

Isaac listened carefully to every story, drinking every word, and storing all those mental images that Brett was sharing safe in his memory. In this way, whenever Isaac went back to the OBs to use his telescope, he would get a completely different perspective. The broad, ice-and-dust, rings of Saturn; the multi-colour sparks that came from the rare-ore mines of the Inner Belt; the giant auroras that collided with the storms of Jupiter; the glaciers of Enceladus; and the violent winds of Venus. Every single thing was something Isaac had read about, seen pictures of, or observed through his telescope, but hearing it from someone who had _seen_ them was something completely different.

Every now and then Brett would use his hands to help his descriptions, moving them in a quick circle, or suddenly extending his arms wide. Isaac loved all of it. A couple of times Brett began to drift away out of pure accumulated momentum, and Isaac was always quick to extend his hand to hold him back in place to keep him close. Every time Isaac did that, Brett gave him a fond smile.

Isaac was very surprised with himself, because it was not normal for him to feel this comfortable with someone he barely knew, but this was what he had always imagined could have happened with Scott. The only difference was that he was very sure that he preferred spending his time like that with Brett.

“So, how come you’ve never been to Earth?” Isaac was curious. “You’ve travelled all across the Solar System.”

“You know how impossible it is to get a permit!”

“Yeah, well. For _us_ here it’s impossible,” Isaac said teasingly – he still hoped his application would be accepted. “But you’re basically a Rocker? That should count for something?”

“How much have you interacted with people from the inner planets?” Brett asked with curiosity.

“Do you count as one?”

“Let’s say no.”

“Well,” Isaac bit his lip to think. “We hardly get any Rockers on Oberon, and even fewer here. It’s mostly the crew from the _Melissa_. And Derek, of course. Otherwise it’s mostly Gasers… There are few Icers around, ‘cause we all get homesick easily. But here we’re all Koops now.”

“And you think that all Rockers are best buddies simply because they all live close together?” Brett said in a tone that Isaac guessed meant that his supposition was wrong.

“They all live within three AUs from each other maximum,” Isaac stated, as if that was all the explanation he needed to support his logic. “From home, back around Uranus, Neptune is nowadays _eleven_ AUs away. And that’s the closest it is going to be for a long while.”

“Yeah, you see,” Brett grinned, “the Mars and Venus colonies are very old and very close together. They have had over three hundred years to learn how to hate each other. What do you think about Plutonians?”

Isaac stopped to think about that for a second, because in his life in the outer Kuiper Belt he had learnt a thing or two about Plutonians and the tight-arsed snobs of the incorporated half of the Kuiper Belt. He guessed that he must have pulled a very expressive face of disgust, because Brett was chuckling.

“I guess we’re lucky they are at their furthest for the next century and a half?”

“Yeah, well, imagine what it is between Venusians and Martians.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Isaac had a thought. “Stiles and Lydia seem to get along quite well.”

“Yeah, you don’t have to share a ship with them,” Brett chuckled. “But what about Uranus? I know you’re reticent to talk about that, and that’s fine,” he reassured, daring to put his hand on Isaac’s shoulder. “But I’m just curious. I’ve only been around there for a gravitational sling.”

Isaac had to stop to think for a second, as he looked down at his own hands. There were many things he could say about Oberon, but he did not want to scare Brett away – there were too many memories that he had not even shared with Mason. Derek had guessed some based on what Jackson had told him, but still, none of his friends (or his new family) on Beacon H knew about the beatings or about the ice shoot.

“ _Uranus is the seventh planet, the main ice giant, and it is a blue-green colour that marks it as the beacon of hope for all spacemen_ ,” Isaac recited with a sardonic smile. “That’s what we learnt at school at least.”

“There are three orbital colonies around the main moons and two larger ones around the planet proper,” he continued. “So yeah, there’s not that many of us to start with, which is why perhaps we always were told to believe that working together was the way forward.”

“We don’t get that in the Belt,” Brett pointed out, trying to ease Isaac into the conversation. “Our colonies were a mix of Martian and Gaser corporate establishments. It was pretty much fierce competition there.”

“Yeah, that sounds like some weird innerd shit,” Isaac joked, and Brett rolled his eyes. “But I liked our sense of community, I guess?”

“Is it really green?”

“It’s a mix of blue and green,” Isaac explained. “And it varies with time. I mean, the axis of Uranus is parallel to the ecliptic, rather than perpendicular like in the other planets. When I found out that we were the odd ones out,” he smiled as he remembered, “I was completely outraged! We could not be the odd ones out? It did not make sense. Like, why would the axes of the planets point out into space? We pointed at the Sun, which made _sense_.”

“Sorry to break this to you,” Brett stifled a giggle, “but you’re the weird ones.”

“No! Don’t you see? It was all perfect, because then in the colony, back on Oberon, we had this large monument, the Timepiece it’s called,” Isaac explained, “which was designed to align with the Sun at the precise moment when… when…” and then Isaac stopped and went quiet. An uncomfortable ball formed in his throat and his eyes began to sting.

“Isaac?” Brett asked cautiously, aware that it was an uncomfortable memory, even if he could not understand why. When Isaac did not answer he reached out with his hand, but the Uranian shrugged him away. “You don’t have to tell me if…. Whatever happened—”

“There was an accident,” Isaac found himself sharing, looking down at his hands again. “The Timepiece would align with the Sun when the colony completed its first full orbit…” he did not finish the sentence, so he clenched his fists and shut his eyes hard.

“Hey,” Brett insisted, trying to turn Isaac around so he was facing him. “You don’t need to tell me anything about this accident. It was obviously very bad. I don’t even want to imagine what could have happened—”

“It was our mum,” Isaac muttered, unexpectedly. He was not in the hydroponics bay of Beacon H anymore, he was on the D gallery with Cam and Jackson, watching the alignment, and then there was a snapping noise, and people screaming, and his brother dragging him down to the viewing platform. “The accident…”

“Shhh, hey, Isaac,” Brett floated until he was right in front of the engineer, who still refused to look up. Brett slowly put one hand on Isaac’s elbow and the other on his shoulder, squeezing gently when he was sure that Isaac would not flinch away. “You don’t need to tell me. I can only imagine—”

“I was eleven,” Isaac interrupted before shutting up again, trying to supress the memories of that day.

“I was seven when our father died,” Brett shared as he moved his hand until it was holding Isaac’s. “Lori was almost six. He worked as a telecom coordinator out on a satellite, and he had to scoot on a hopper in and out every day from Ceres. Nobody noticed that there was a problem with the pressure regulators until it was too late.”

The two of them went quiet for a second. Isaac knew that Brett had also lived with a foster family, but he had never mentioned how that had happened in the first place.

“Our mother had never been around,” the Ceresian continued, although Isaac guessed that Brett was trying to be strong for _him_ right now. Isaac was not sure how they had got to that situation, or why Brett was willingly sharing this with him. He was not sure either why he cared so much about Brett’s pain. “So when dad died we were put in foster care. And that’s how we ended up with Satomi,” Brett glossed over too quickly as he sniffled and squeezed Isaac’s hands, trying to give him a smile that the Uranian only barely managed to return.

“I, er… my friend Jackson smuggled me onto the _Talia_ ,” he confessed without specifying any details. “That’s when I was taken in by the Hewitts.”

**~ * ~**

The two young men floated in silence in the low-gravity bay for a while, neither speaking much, but simply being there for each other. Isaac could only imagine what Brett had gone through, because he had been even younger than he had been (and he had to be the caring, older brother), but at least he had the luck of soon finding a foster family that cared for him and his sister. Isaac felt an urge to ask more, to make sure that Brett was okay, but he knew too well what that kind of questions felt like, and he did not want to stir anything. He just wanted to be there.

A bee bumbled around until it landed on Isaac, and the engineer gently waved her away, which seemed to snap them out of their wallowing. Unconsciously he let go of Brett’s hand.

“What do you think about Liam?” Isaac asked, dramatically changing subject.

“What about him?” Brett seemed happy to talk about something else.

“About him and that ringtard captain.”

“Oh,” Brett arched his eyebrows in a way that Isaac suddenly found very intriguing.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, well, I told you I was not that kind of gossip?” he reminded him with a teasing smile.

“You live with him,” Isaac pushed. “You must know more than I do. And I need to know because of Hayden?”

“I thought you said you were not that friendly with her?” Brett teased again. Isaac rolled his eyes.

“I still care about her, especially if she’s going to get hurt because of Theo.”

“What’s your problem with him exactly?” Brett now asked with sincerity.

“I just don’t like him,” Isaac tried to avoid going too deep into that.

“Yeah, that much I gathered,” Brett did not mention the fight, but it was heavily implied in his tone, and Isaac shifted uncomfortably.

“It’s just… I mean… He’s…” Isaac tried to find a way around it, because he really wanted to justify to Brett what he did, because he did not want Brett to think that he was a violent drunkard (he was not that person anymore). But he was not sure of how he could explain it without sounding petty or without revealing too much. “I’ve just had bad experiences with Saturnians in the past,” Isaac hoped that was vague enough. “I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but I can’t really stand him. And he put his hands on me.”

Something clicked briefly in Brett’s head, and Isaac noticed.

“Isaac, you know that if I get too touchy-feely you can tell me, right?” he said, suddenly very serious and worried. Not that he had been so far, anyways. “I don’t… I don’t want you to be uncomfortable around me, and I’m sorry if—”

“Oh, no, no, Brett, don’t worry” Isaac was quick to apologise, and even reached out with his hand, and was immensely relieved when the mechanic took it with the small, side smile that made Isaac’s insides fuzzy. “You’re alright. I don’t mind it when… well. When it’s _you_.”

“Well, thank you,” Brett squeezed his hand and widened his smile. “That’s good to know.”

“It’s just with annoying Saturnians who try too hard.”

“He’s not that bad?” Brett said with a grin. “I’m happy for Liam.”

“Yeah, everyone keeps telling me… Perhaps I’m being irrational. He has tried to be friendly,” _except when he deliberately did not apologise_ , he reminded himself.

“He’s definitely good with Liam.”

“Oh, so now you’re _that_ kind of gossip?” Isaac smirked, and Brett chuckled. “Now you have to tell me.”

“He’s perfectly nice, Isaac,” Brett insisted. “He came to the _Melissa_ looking for Scott because of the cargo, but he was not there, so Liam tried to help.”

Brett went on an explanation on how Theo and Liam ended up spending a lot of time together discussing how the tholins were going to be compressed for transport. That soon evolved into a discussion over lunch. Liam apparently had returned very flustered to the _Melissa_ that afternoon, and went on a cleaning spree of his cabin, looking for something nice to wear that evening, because apparently Theo had invited him for dinner.

“And then he seemed to be on the _Melissa_ every evening after our shift,” Brett continued. “He came over and grabbed Liam’s hand and smiled at him and—”

“Yeah, I don’t really want to know?” Isaac shook his head.

“He was really sweet,” Brett continued as he shooed a bee away. “But he was also very direct, leaving no doubt about what he wanted.”

“I still don’t—”

“As in,” Brett continued with a malicious smile, enjoying how Isaac cringed at the very thought of Theo and Liam, “he told him ‘I want you in my room to spend the night together’ when he walked him back from dinner.”

“Tell me this is what Liam told you afterwards—” Isaac could not believe what he was hearing

“I saw it,” Brett deadpanned only to see Isaac groan. “I was carrying a crate of water bags and they were in the crew deck’s hall.”

“Please stop,” Isaac begged through his hands as he suppressed a snigger.

“Liam looked at him for a second and then he jumped on him and stuck his tongue in—”

“Yep. Enough,” Isaac feigned a shudder as he pushed Brett away. The mechanic laughed and he reached his hands out to hold Isaac before the two drifted too far apart.

Isaac rolled his eyes hard, because it had been so easy for Theo to get that reaction out of Liam when Hayden had been trying so hard and so long to get a minimum of Liam’s attention. The Station Administrator may not have been his favourite person in the colony, but he could sympathise with her. Maybe it was the different approach the two had taken to Liam, but that did not make any sense. In Isaac’s experience, in his pre-Scott days, when getting laid and one-night stands with docked crews had been easy, Isaac had used a similar approach to Theo’s back then, but only because it was self-evident and to the point. In Isaac’s mind that only worked with the kind of people who wanted Isaac for his body and that was it. Someone who interacted like that would have never been interested in Isaac as a person, and Scott had been the perfect example. Isaac had dropped that act because he could never conceive it working as the basis to develop a relationship.

Of course, seeing that that strategy had taken him nowhere with Scott had made him reconsider his approach. And still, he liked that Brett was not like that. He liked that Brett took an interest in him (that he _liked_ him) without having to resort to that. Besides, Isaac now was certain that Brett not only liked him, but also cared about him.

The warm, gooey and fuzzy feeling inside him was definitely growing into a Brett-like shape.

“I just…” Isaac said once he had pulled Brett back so they were hovering close to each other. “I can only think about Hayden really. It’s not as if she did not try…”

Brett paused for a second, clearly trying to put his thoughts in order.

“Maybe Liam was not ready for her?” Brett suggested. “Maybe he was too focused on something else to notice that she was there for him. Maybe it’s his loss?”

“Do you think that she never had a chance?” Isaac said with an edge to his voice.

“I’m not saying that. I don’t know her that well, but maybe now she has a chance to find someone who values her?”

Isaac sensed the way Brett’s voice had changed. Now it was a cautious and warm whisper, and that was beginning to make him uncomfortable.

“It still hurts,” Isaac mumbled, not wanting to look at Brett.

“Isaac, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Brett said, scooting closer, but managing to give Isaac enough space. “And I don’t care if you want to think of me as a rebound. I just want you to know that for me you are worth it.”

“I don’t want to talk about Scott,” Isaac deflected.

“I didn’t say we had to,” Brett insisted. “I just want to talk about us.”

**~ * ~**

Isaac was quiet for a few seconds before pushing himself away into the centre of the hydroponics bay. Brett was about to follow, but the engineer told him to wait. A few agonising minutes later, Brett saw Isaac return with a handful of fruits.

“I didn’t know which one you’d like best, so I brought a pear, a peach, and an orange,” he said still not looking into Brett’s eyes.

“Are these your apology fruits?” Brett teased, and Isaac had to look up at him and even got a smile out of it.

“ _No_ ,” Isaac rolled his eyes as Brett picked the pear. “These are just… conversational fruits.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means that it gives me something to focus my hands on while we talk,” Isaac admitted in a low voice. He was glad he could keep the orange, because that gave him a better excuse to keep his hands busy for longer. Otherwise, he would finish his pear only to start scratching his elbow or messing with his hair, or fiddle with whatever he had in his pocket that would only make him _more_ nervous. “It’s just that I’m not good at… erm… talking about these things.”

That was not even close to be an understatement. Every time Mason or Erica needed to pull a heartfelt conversation out of him, they needed to get him drunk or corner him in his room lest he shut like a clam. Not that his father would have ever approved of him talking about those things, of course and, once his mother died, bottling up feelings and pretending that nothing happened had become a matter of survival.

“What is it to have Scott as captain?” Isaac asked.

“He’s… he’s quite awesome,” Brett answered with honesty. “The crew is like his family. Oort, he named the ship after his mother!”

“He did?”

“Yeah,” Brett confirmed. “But how is this talking about us?”

“It’s just…” Isaac ran through his thoughts before answering. Scott had been such an important part of what he thought his life could have been, true; but, in reality, it had all been dreams. Isaac had invested too much in expectations and that had not worked at all. The truth was that Brett was there for him, and Scott was not. “You’re right. I don’t want to talk about Scott.”

“Hey, I can understand. He’s an amazing guy.”

“You’re not that bad yourself,” Isaac grinned.

“Oh well, there we go,” Brett clapped and did a complete spin in the low-gravity air. “I _finally_ get a compliment out of you!”

“What do you mean ‘finally’?”

“Let’s just say you have a very personal way of showing how you feel about people. I mean,” Brett continued with a smirk, “you make it very clear when it comes to Stiles or Theo. But otherwise…”

“Ha! True. My friends get me, though. They say they can read my face.”

“It takes a while to learn to see through your sarcasm,” Brett teased, “but one gets there eventually.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yep.”

“Are you an expert on all things Isaac now?” the engineer taunted.

“You tell me.”

Isaac had been unprepared for that. Just like when Brett had asked him to shift the cables on the ceiling of that corridor on the _Melissa_. Isaac wanted to be angry at that, but he could not.

“Well, we… we work together, right?” Isaac said with a faint smile.

“We do,” Brett agreed.

“But we’re also like, kind of friends,” Isaac bit his lip, but still kept smiling. “Seeing that you can read me as well.”

“Ha! Yes, true.”

“But…” and there Isaac stopped, second guessing himself before continuing in a less confident tone. “But we can be more, maybe?”

“If you want to,” Brett kept encouraging with his voice and his eyes full of sincerity, letting Isaac slowly close the gap between them.

This was where Isaac stopped though. He held his breath as a handful of recurring thoughts crept to his mind, making him hold to the girder to stop himself from getting any closer. He really wanted to but the nagging doubt of what would happen once Brett got on the _Melissa_ cast a long shadow. Isaac dropped his head.

Isaac let his held breath out and let go of the orange, which floated away into the bay. He gently put his hand forward until Brett held it, squeezing it briefly. Isaac gave him a small smile as he made circles on the back of Brett’s hand with his thumb.

“I really like you, Isaac,” Brett said, trying to be helpful, and making Isaac’s smile widen. “And I think that you like me?”

When Isaac heard this, he looked up at Brett, at his square chin, and his thin lips, and then his deep blue eyes framed by to arching eyebrows. They stared at each other for an instant before Isaac snorted nervously and nodded.

“Yep, I think so too.”

 _Kiss him_ , a voice called in Isaac’s head.

“But…?” Brett scrunched his face, sensing that despite the admission there was still something rounding the Uranian’s head.

Isaac knew he needed to talk. He knew he needed to explain what his fears and his concerns were. But he could not. His brain would not let those thoughts loose – they were safer pushed deep inside and buried.

“I’m not sure if…”

Brett deflated for a second, but something in Isaac stirred, and his hand squeezed Brett’s, hoping to transmit the reassurance that his words could not. Brett’s expression softened at that, and Isaac again felt that warm sensation inundating his chest.

“Well, at least we all know now,” he tried to say helpfully. “I don’t mind giving you time, Isaac. I know you’re not in the best place now…” Isaac snorted and shook his head. “But keep in mind that, whenever we’re together, I’m thinking about kissing you,” he concluded with a wink.

Isaac felt his cheeks blush, because he could not deny that he also shared the thought. Of course, he knew now that Brett could read him, so there was no doubt that the Ceresian knew what was going through Isaac’s head.

Slowly, Brett let go of Isaac’s hand and picked up the pear that was still floating somewhere around them. He took a loud bite and, with a side smile, he pushed himself away, back to the airlock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really liked writing this one. It only took some 60k words to get here, mind, but here we are! They boys having a proper moment together!


	11. Reassessments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erica looked at Brett very carefully, clearly evaluating him before making a decision. Was this the kind of guy that Isaac should stay clear from? The planetologist looked at Isaac, who had shifted ever so slightly towards Brett, and had given him the briefest glance with a smile. She decided that perhaps this time Isaac had actually found someone decent.
> 
> OR: Isaac and Brett slowly bring their relationship one step further

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case, trigger warning: at the very end, Isaac ends up in a tight space and he does not like it. Nothing worse than in the show, though.

Isaac was left floating around in the hydroponics bay, completely shocked. He could not believe that Brett had said what he had said, and he was even _more_ surprised with what Isaac himself had. Brett had talked about feelings, and Isaac had talked about feelings, and nothing bad had happened. The airlock had not burst, sucking them into space; the bees had not suddenly gone feral and tried to kill them; and Brett had not pulled his heart out and thrown it into the compost recycler – all of which were scenarios that Isaac’s subconscious had long ago decided would happen if he ever spoke about his feelings.

Brett liked him and he liked Brett back – and he had said it aloud.

With the widest grin plastered on his face, Isaac tumbled around in the low-gravity bay until his heel hit one of the steel girders painfully, scaring a handful of bees that had been observing him and making him curse.

Isaac fumbled with his buzzer and rang Mason to tell him about the Big News that had Just Happened, but his foster brother did not answer. Isaac tried again because if he did not tell someone he might burst of pure joy, but he got the same result. Guessing that he was probably busy with his work with the telescope, Isaac dropped him a few lines and made his way back to the station.

The engineer was on the elevator down to the ring, typing a detailed and very long message to Erica, when he received an incoming call.

“Braeden?” Isaac answered, slightly confused.

“Where are you now?” she sounded annoyed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked while making sure that his scarf was wrapped correctly.

“Where are you, Isaac.”

“On the elevator, heading towards the—”

“Good,” she interrupted. “Come straight to the Sunside docks.”

“What’s going on?”

“A tholin trolley finally arrived,” she sighed, clearly preferring to do anything else at that moment.

Isaac tapped a few commands on the elevator’s AI, and the cabin accelerated. “Okay, I’m on my way. Bit of a surprise, isn’t it?”

“Yeah well, all outside comms have been down for the last hour,” she clicked her tongue, and Isaac knew she was not best pleased.

“Sure. See you in a tick.”

A few minutes later, Isaac was power-walking through the Avenue with Greenberg, who was bringing him his toolbox, close by his side. At the corner of the Engineering Block, and tapping her foot whilst crossing her arms, was Braeden.

“Where have you been?”

“I- I- I was in hydroponics?” Isaac was quick to explain, but Braeden did not wait for Isaac’s explanation. She just turned on her heel and headed towards the dock where the tholin cargo vessel was waiting.

“You couldn’t have picked a better time…” she moaned, although not specifically at him. “I have a crew of idiots waiting in the airlock which I cannot let onto the station because it’s another new ship and we need—”

“Whoa, hold on. Is it just, like, a new ship or another _new_ ship?” Isaac stepped ahead of Braeden to make sure he had heard correctly.

“I swear on Phobos and Deimos, Isaac. I am not in the mood right now for that.”

Braeden threatened him with a finger and walked ahead when the Uranian stepped aside.

“What did I miss?” Isaac whispered to Greenberg, who had just caught up with them.

“Yes, I better warn you, Isaac. The crew of this ship; they’re odd.”

“Oh, fantastic. It’s never easy,” the chief engineer rolled his eyes as they tried to keep up with Braeden’s hasty pace.

But Greenberg had more news. “Yeah… they have also been detained in the airlock for over forty minutes, waiting for the final paperwork, and they are getting restless.”

Isaac stopped suddenly and looked at Greenberg, who offered his best apologetic smile, even if it was none of his fault. He was not the officer in charge of giving the thumbs up to new incoming spaceships. Isaac sighed and fished a large wrench out of his toolbox.

“Hold this.”

“What is this for?”

“Take the temptation away, Greenberg. I’m not in the mood for asteroids right now.”

Just as he had been forewarned, when Isaac reached the airlock he saw that there was a crew of four. The captain of the _UTSS Wendigo_ was a pale and dark-haired man who was testing Braeden’s patience.

“I just need to say,” the captain said in a (surprise, surprise) thick accent, much like Theo’s, “that this is our first trip here to Beacon H, and with all my respects, miss, but this is absolute shambles.”

Isaac saw a flash of cold rage in Braeden’s eyes. It seemed that this time it was not going to be him the one getting into trouble with docked crew.

“Listen to me carefully, Donati,” Braeden hissed while the two constables that usually accompanied her in these jobs kept the distance between the crew and the woman. “I am the security officer of this station, and if I say you’re not landing here, then you’ll get back onto your ship and sod off to—”

“Okay,” Greenberg interrupted, and Isaac huffed with a sly smirk. He would have loved to see Braeden arresting that captain and quarantining the crew on their ship until they learnt some manners. “Shall we all calm down for a second so we can all do our jobs?”

“Spoil sport,” Isaac murmured, but Braeden silenced him with a single look.

“Gentlemen,” Braeden told the two security constables as she stared Captain Donati down, “Keep these men here until we have concluded our inspection. _Then_ we can sign them in and allow them to enter the station.”

The two men saluted and nudged the crew to the waiting room that opened to the side of the airlock. Thankfully Greenberg was there today, so Isaac silently nodded at him, and the mechanic understood, so he scurried away to the auxiliary gallery to do the outside checks. That would save them some time. As Braeden stormed onboard the ship, Isaac took his time to walk past the crew, stopping for the briefest of instants to give them a sassy snort and a smirk before walking in. His mood was ruined when he heard one of the members of the crew idly whistling the same cursed Saturnian tune that Josh had also whistled.

“Do you want to talk about that?” Isaac teased, trying to ignore the whistled music that echoed in his ears, knowing he was playing with fire.

“That frozeball,” Braeden hissed, but Isaac did not understand, because the captain was definitely not a Neptunian or a Uranian. “Donovan Donati; remember that name and stay away from him,” she instructed. “Because if I find out that you picked a fight with him too, I swear to space—”

“Easy there, officer Hale,” Isaac put his hands up in surrender. “I have left my fighting days behind.”

That was not a complete lie, because Isaac had decided to give Theo a chance, seeing that everyone seemed to agree that he was acceptable. But this Donovan person seemed like the type who _looked_ for trouble – and Isaac would be happy to oblige.

“Let’s focus on the ship,” Braeden huffed before boarding.

The _Wendigo_ seemed to be a sister ship to the _Chimera_ ; brand new (to Isaac’ disbelief), loaded with unpressurised tholins on the external cargo hull, and hiding no illegal contraband of any sorts (which Braeden thought was a big shame, because she had been looking for the tiniest excuse to put the captain under arrest). There was, however, something large and covered in space-mesh on the starboard side of the cargo deck.

“Isaac, do you know what that is?” Braeden asked as they approached the piece of heavy machinery.

The cargo deck was well lit and had been clearly prepared for inspection by the crew. The machine had a series of low-temp pistons, large double-coated cylinders and a series of pipes and tubes running all around it. The entire thing formed a very compact cube, some three meters wide, although Isaac guessed that it was only like that for transportation purposes. In fact, Isaac found a console for commands on the outside that—

“Don’t touch it!”

Isaac and Braeden turned around in alarm, only to see that it was just Erica.

“Isaac, do not touch that! That’s the new tholin compressor!”

“What are you on about?” Isaac demanded with a furrowed brow. “That looks _nothing_ like a tholin compressor.”

“It’s _new_ ,” Erica explained as she quickly descended down the ladder from the platform to the cargo deck. “I saw it when I was round the crackers. They had put this together, and I demanded they bring it over to compress the tholins that the _Chimera_ had brought.”

“This is actually our machinery?” Braeden was not sure if she believed it, but as she went through the cargo log, she found something. “Oh, is this it? ‘Cargo item 45. T vac proc p v, comm b ER’?”

“Yes,” Erica rolled her eyes as she shooed her two friends away from her precious piece of equipment. “ _Tholin vacuum processor with piston vats, commandeered by Erica Reyes_.”

“And how are we supposed to know that your cryptic note refers to that!”

While Braeden and Erica argued about procedures, standards, needs, and ad hoc decisions, Isaac walked slowly around the machinery. He could guess where the solid tholins could come in, and he discovered where the canisters for the final result were, but the thing was so tightly packed that he could not guess how it worked. Isaac was completely fascinated by this second example of brand-new engineering, even if he did not have a clue about how it worked. It was definitely different to the old Neptunian tholin compressors he knew, and he could not wait to see it in action.

**~*~**

Over the next few days, the pace of the works on the _Melissa_ picked up and, by the end of the week, the most important and necessary repairs were done. During those days, Isaac and Brett returned to the easy chat and flirty banter that they had at the beginning, only this time it was not only the Ceresian starting it. Isaac, knowing firmly where he stood, regained some of his old confidence and cockiness, which Brett found funny. Of course, he knew that Isaac was putting up a façade, a smug mask of sarcasm that was his way of coping and shielding his insecurities from the outside world, but he found Isaac’s comments witty and hilarious.

Naturally, the more comfortable Isaac felt around Brett, the more he spoke, and the more he joked. Everything was just easier. Perhaps the thing that impressed him the most was that Brett always had a positive response to whatever he did; he would laugh or smile, or say thank you, or comment, or anything. Needless to say, he had normal and positive interactions with Mason and the Hewitts, or with Erica or Boyd. Even with Derek and Braeden. They were his friends, and almost his family after all. But with Brett it was _different_ ; with Brett, Isaac felt that it all was building up towards _something_ that he had always thought he would have shared with Scott. Something that in his foolish younger days he might have had with Gabe or with Nolan before him.

They still had their mid-morning break with juice and chocolate wherever they were working, which Brett admitted he had never had so often before, but Isaac only replied that he needed the sugar kick to keep him going through the mornings. At lunch times they would have their meals in the canteen, where Brett got to meet Erica and Boyd in more social circumstances. Isaac had tried to avoid that at all costs, but Erica had not given him a chance.

“ _Finally_ ,” the planetologist said with exaggeration. “We found you, Isaac! It has been impossible. Where have you been hiding? And who would this charming mechanic be?”

“Okay, okay. Stop it. Brett, these are Boyd, whom you know already, and Erica, whom I’ve told you about.” Then Isaac turned to face her with a resentful glare in his eyes. “This is my best friend who has nothing better to do and who seems to think that frightening every guy I meet is her only purpose in life.”

“Oh, so he is a ‘guy you’re meeting’, huh?” she said as she put her tray down and looked at Brett, only to make Isaac growl.

“Brett is a terrific mechanic,” Boyd intervened, trying to be helpful. “That much I can tell. Did you know that they’re almost done with the _Melissa_?”

“Oh, yeah!” Isaac’s face illuminated with the chance to avoid Erica’s not-subtle questioning.

“No! No shop talk while at lunch?” Erica threatened them with her spork, and Isaac and Boyd burst into a fit of laughter.

“Isaac has told me you met on the colony ship?” Brett diverted the conversation skilfully. Under the table, and without anyone else noticing, he nudged Isaac’s knee with his own. “So are you from Mars?”

Erica looked at Brett very carefully, clearly evaluating him before making a decision. Was this the kind of guy that Isaac should stay clear from? The planetologist looked at Isaac, who had shifted ever so slightly towards Brett, and had given him the briefest glance with a smile. She decided that perhaps this time Isaac had actually found someone decent.

While they ate and chatted, Isaac noticed Erica sending a quick message on her buzzer, and the engineer guessed what it was all about when Derek and Braeden appeared out of the blue to sit at their table for lunch.

“Oh, Braeden, Derek, what a surprise,” Erica lied with all her smugness. “Sit down, have your lunch with us. And have you met Brett?” she asked without giving Isaac a chance to speak.

“I’m Braeden,” the security officer introduced herself with a big, knowing grin, extending her hand for Brett to shake. “And this one here is my husband, Station Commander Derek Hale.”

“Oh, pleasure to meet you!” Brett said politely as he shook hands.

Isaac glared at Erica for a second, but she decidedly ignored him, focusing all her attention on interrogating Brett with Braeden. Isaac then looked at Derek who, even if he remained silent, was very clearly listening to all the conversation, and he gave Isaac a quick smile. Isaac rolled his eyes. Boyd stifled a snort.

By the end of the meal, Braeden had subtly invited Isaac and Brett to have dinner at their cabin, while Erica collected enough information to confirm her original gut instinct. Boyd gave him a sympathetic clap on the shoulder as he left, and in the end it was just Brett and Isaac sitting on their own at the long table of Beacon H’s canteen.

“I… erm… I am sorry for my friends,” Isaac apologised as he swore silently to take revenge. “They can be a bit intense…”

“They are your friends, Isaac. It’s normal that they want to be overprotective. They care about you. You’re lucky to have them,” he concluded with a smile, and leant over so their shoulders and their knees were together. Isaac kept looking at his knee, but he gave a small smile when Brett put his hand on his leg and rubbed it with his thumb.

In the same way that the two had a meal with Isaac’s friends, one day, after a particularly long shift on the _Melissa_ , Brett offered Isaac to have dinner onboard with the rest of the crew. Isaac stiffened for a second thinking that this might mean having dinner with Scott and Allison.

“Only if you want to,” Brett said softly, putting his hands on Isaac’s shoulders and closing the gap between them. “I’ll be here with you all the time, and you know all of the crew already.”

Isaac bit his lip as he thought. After taking a deep breath he nodded, and Brett beamed at him and squeezed the Uranian’s shoulders. Isaac definitely liked whenever Brett touched him like that, softly and carefully, but sending jolts of energy every time he did it.

 _Keep in mind that, whenever we’re together, I’m thinking about kissing you._ Brett’s words were always in Isaac’s mind whenever they were close, or their shoulders brushed, or he patted his knee, or gave him a smile. Isaac really wanted to give in and kiss him, throw himself at Brett and put their lips together while raking his fingers through his hair and snaking his hand under his shirt, but he had not made a move. Something at the back of his mind still told him that, if he went there, it would not end up well; blue-eyed ship mechanics pack up and leave, after all, and he wanted to be sure that it was going to be worth the wait.

“Fine…” he admitted. “But you still owe me a drink and a proper night out.”

“Pick a date,” Brett offered, and Isaac paused for a second before replying.

“I’ll let you know,” he concluded with a wink.

Isaac’s only experiences dining on ships had been on the _Talia_ , and that had been with hundreds of other colonists. Dinner on the _Melissa_ was definitely different: much more intimate, in a way, seeing that only the crew sat together around the large circular table.

“Oh, Mr Lahey, you’re joining us for dinner today?” Lydia asked when she saw the two blond men walk in together.

“Isaac!” Scott said too loudly and very surprised. Isaac froze, because the captain was suddenly very flustered, and that was making Isaac nervous. “It’s great to see you! I mean, I’m happy that you’re having dinner with us? I- I- I mean, quite a surprise?”

“Scotty, tone it down a bit,” Stiles said, thankfully leaving the elephant in the room unaddressed. “Please ignore him, Isaac,” he continued, looking at the engineer now, “he’s just—you know what? Never mind. Sit down.”

To Isaac’s great surprise, Stiles (who was still wearing those damned headphones around his neck) shifted along the long, deep-orange bench so he did not have to sit next to Scott. That meant that he would sit in between Lydia and Brett.

“Dinner will be ready in a minute,” Malia shouted from the food processing area. “We’re having deer tonight.”

Isaac immediately turned to Brett, eyes open wide, because he knew deer were wild animals from Earth with horns. Brett chuckled as he explained that it was an old colony recipe, which did not use deer, but pork and beef paste cooked in a way specific to the Argyre region of Mars.

“You’ll like it,” Brett said.

“Hey everyone,” a voice said from the door. It was Liam. “I hope you don’t mind, but I brought Theo for dinner tonight!”

Then Theo appeared from behind Liam, holding his hand with a big smile and giving everyone a quick wave. Isaac bit the inside of his cheek. _Give him a chance; give him a chance; just for tonight, Isaac – give him the one chance…_

“It seems it’s family dinner night tonight!” Allison exclaimed with a big smile aimed at Isaac, and he had to concede that _maybe_ (and only maybe) she was not your average, man-snatching, Martian tart. Maybe she was nice after all. Oort, he was giving Theo a chance, and Allison had not manhandled him. Brett must have noticed something, because he gently nudged their shoulders together.

Dinner with the crew of the _Melissa_ was definitely an experience that Isaac enjoyed. Once the food was on the table, they all drifted into an easy conversation with their odd Rocker words and expressions that Isaac found funny. They all knew him, so he was not subjected to a covert interrogation like Brett had, but Lydia and Scott seemed very keen in making sure that Isaac was not left out. In many ways, the crew of the _Melissa_ formed a tight family, very similar to his own group of friends on Beacon H.

What Isaac found more intriguing was how easily Theo fitted in that group. From what he gathered, Theo had been coming on the _Melissa_ for meals with Liam every so often, and he had quickly befriended Scott, Allison and Lydia. Stiles was unusually silent around him, and Malia was the only one who seemed to share Isaac’s opinion of the Saturnian captain. But Theo joked, and made insightful comments, and even had some ongoing inside joke with Scott – he seemed to fit perfectly. Isaac did not have the right to be jealous, because he had been friends with Scott way before that uppity ringtard had turned up, but it had been a very long time since he had shared a moment like that with Scott.

Isaac let go of those thoughts the moment Brett asked him for the water and gave him a quick wink.

Throughout the meal, Isaac saw how Liam and Theo had very quickly become an inseparable couple. They were so obviously in love (especially Liam), that it was sickening at times. Isaac was a bit jealous, because he never had the chance to have a relationship like that. Then again, when he looked at Brett as he discussed something about the weather on Mars with Lydia, he could only think about what could be, and what he could have.

Once dinner was over, Isaac insisted that he needed to go back to his cabin. The excuse was that it was getting late and he had to be up early in the morning. The truth was that he _needed_ to tell Mason everything. Brett at least walked him to the airlock.

“So, you remember what you said earlier?” Isaac asked deliberately vaguely when they got to the docking area.

“I’ve said many things,” Brett smiled as Isaac put his arms around his waist, pulling him closer.

“What are you doing the night after tomorrow?” he arched an eyebrow, and he had to bite his tongue, because inside his head he could only hear a voice shouting _kiss him_.

“Whatever you want.”

“Cool,” Isaac clicked his tongue as he playfully pushed Brett away. The Mechanic rolled his eyes and dramatically put his hands on his chest, on top of his heart. “Make sure you wear something nice.”

**~*~**

The following morning Isaac walked very purposefully towards the _Melissa_ , thinking how, so far, he had had an excuse to be there; because he had to work there. But now that the ship was almost ready, his excuse was expiring. Which meant that the next time he wanted to go there, it would be only because he wanted to see Brett. There was nothing wrong with that – he _wanted_ to go and see Brett. But there was still the lingering fear of getting too attached to people who come and go, and a part of him was still not sure if this was what he really needed.

Isaac was almost at the airlock when he thought that he would treat Brett to something nice. He was taking him out for a date on the following day (he had promised Mason he’d visit their parents that evening), but there was no reason why not to make something special about today. Isaac loved having juice and chocolate during their breaks (even after Brett confessed that he had never before had that combination), but maybe he should buy some peach pastries. Or maybe something savoury, in case Brett thought he was apologising for something. Perhaps he would get one of those cheesy flatbreads. They were lucky they had a talented baker on Beacon H. He turned around on his heel with a big smile and walked off to the canteen.

After he paid for the flatbreads, he dashed quickly back to the workshop to confirm something with Greenberg, who sent him on a wild goose chase up to the Administration Block for some piece of equipment that he needed to sign for.

_**ILAHEY:** I’ll be there in a minute_

_**ILAHEY:** Station paperwork…_

_**BTALBOT** : I’m not going anywhere yet!_

Isaac was typing a reply while walking down the steps to the Avenue when he caught Theo in the corner of his eye, coming down his way. The Uranian cursed, because even if he was trying to get on well with him, he was not in the mood right now. He was in the mood for Brett. So Isaac waited for a second behind the corner of the stairs, trying to prep himself up for an inevitable encounter that never happened.

“Hey, Hayden,” he heard the captain say. Isaac had not seen Hayden, but she must have been just around the corner.

“Hey, Theo,” she said, not sounding very pleased. “Is everything okay between you and Liam?”

Those last words were full of pain; Isaac could tell that much.

“Yes, they are, and no thanks to you,” Theo spat. Isaac quickly erased all thoughts of giving him a second chance. He was just like the rest of his crew.

“I…”

“You what?” Theo snarled again. “You missed your chance with him, so now you better stay clear before you ruin everything.”

Isaac might not have been Hayden’s best friend, but he was not going to allow any fucking ringtard to talk to his colleague like that. Then again, he had already had an encounter with him, and Isaac did not want to push his luck. He needed to play it cool, but he would not hesitate if he had to throw a punch. _Again_.

“Oh, hello you two,” Isaac faked surprise as he walked straight into their conversation. “I just came from Admin, because I needed to fill in a K34,” he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at the building behind him while staring intently at Theo. “I did not interrupt anything, did I?”

“No, not at all,” Theo pulled his usual smile, which now Isaac was one hundred percent sure was fake. “I was just on my way to the canteen.”

“Try the soup today,” Isaac said, his voice level, and his eyes still fixed on Theo’s, not even pretending to walk on. “It’s leek and squash.”

For an instant, Theo held Isaac’s stare, but the engineer simply stepped closer to accentuate how the Saturnian had to look _up_ , which was childish and petty, but at least Isaac could win at that. Theo clicked his tongue before very deliberately patting Isaac’s shoulder.

“I’ll give it a try then.” With that, he was off.

Once Theo was far enough for Isaac’s liking, he turned to Hayden.

“What was all that about?” he asked with true concern. “We can go and speak with Braeden—”

“There’s no need for that, Isaac, thank you,” she said as she nervously tried to tuck her hair behind her ears. “He’s erm… he’s with Liam now, and I need to accept that.”

“I think Liam would have been lucky to have you. I think this is his loss,” because suddenly Isaac was one to give relationship advice. “I mean, if you want we can—”

“Thanks for your concern, Isaac, but that won’t be necessary,” she said as she walked away briskly, up the stairs to the Admin Block.

“Are you sure?” Isaac asked again, walking behind her.

“Please, let it be, Isaac,” she insisted, her voice still unsteady, clearly holding back a sob.

It took Isaac a couple of seconds to realise that he had stopped and been left on his own. Isaac knew too well what Hayden was going through. Making a mental note to discuss this with Erica later, Isaac made his way back to the _Melissa_.

“Why the long face?” Malia called him, snapping him out of his thoughts. She was controlling the loading bots that were transporting the compressed tholins from the _Wendigo_ and the _Chimera_ onto the _Melissa_.

For a second he considered whether to lie his way through this, but Isaac remembered clearly how Malia was perhaps the only other person not a fan of Theo.

“Just Liam’s boyfriend,” he said in a mocking tone, not even bothering to name him. “He was telling Hayden to stay away from his man, and I scared him off.” It was a version of the truth, but mostly true regardless.

“Urgh, that _creep_ ,” she pulled a face of disgust. “He tried it with me before he moved on to Liam, you know?”

“Oh?” That was new to Isaac.

“Yep,” she said before pausing for a second as she typed a few extra commands on the bots’ panel. “He tried all his soft words and bright eyes crap and I told him very clearly what I thought about him.”

Isaac’s esteem towards Malia grew exponentially when he heard those words.

“And then he moved on to Liam?”

“You’d think by the way they are all over each other that he had found true love,” Malia snorted. “But I think he was more up for a wild ride and a warm bed.”

“Man, I wish I could punch him again,” Isaac confessed as a half-joke.

“Yeah, I heard!” Malia sounded impressed. “Remind me to get you a drink next time for that?”

“I shall!”

“Oh, and speaking of wild rides and bright eyes,” Malia asked now with a grin. “How’s Brett?”

Isaac bit his lip and shook his head, trying to hold back a smile and refusing to answer, but that was all Malia needed to see.

**~*~**

“These things are great!” Brett said as he ate the cheesy bread. “What do you call them again?”

“Koop rarebit,” Isaac grinned. “I think it’s two different dishes mashed together.”

“Is that the secret of Koop cuisine?”

“It’s the key to Koop _culture_.”

Isaac has seen in his few years out in the Kuiper Belt how the old timers from other outer rim colonies always were trying new things and mixing old things up. For a time, the outer rim had been a place for runaways and outcasts who wanted to leave things behind. Perhaps, Isaac thought, that was their way of feeling at home, by starting something new.

“What else is Koop cuisine?” Brett wanted to know as he brushed the crumbs and grease off his hands on his boiler suit.

“You’ll get a real taste tomorrow,” Isaac said with a purposefully mysterious grin.

“What are we doing tomorrow?” Brett asked now, all curious soft smiles and intrigued blue eyes, and Isaac could have melted there.

“Just a few of my favourite things…” Isaac replied casually.

“Are we now?”

“Don’t be impatient. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

“If they’re your favourite things then I’m already interested, regardless of what they may be.”

Isaac chuckled.

“Don’t say that until you’re there,” he explained, trying to keep himself from floating away to a cloud. “You may not like it…”

“But whatever we do, it’s important to you,” Brett reached out to hold Isaac’s hand. “So I’m intrigued. You really make this getting to know each other difficult.”

The engineer squeezed Brett’s hand, but he looked away and stood up.

“Let’s get back to work.”

By the end of their shift, Brett and Isaac had set up the panels back on the walls and the ceiling. Isaac was actually humming some old Neptunian pop hit that Brett had, for a change, heard of. He was so focused on his task, and so blissfully unaware of his surroundings, that he did not notice that someone was waiting for them until he heard a throat being cleared.

“You two have been busy,” Stiles said. To his credit he looked genuinely impressed. “Thank you for taking good care of my baby.”

Isaac carefully put his wrench back in his toolbox before replying. “Does Lydia know about your affair with a spaceship?” he asked with a half-cocked grin.

Stiles was about to say something snarky and impertinent, but Brett chided in first. “Oh, we all know.”

“Don’t you start, Lahey,” Stiles bit back a retort. “I came here to congratulate and thank you for your _amazing_ work.”

“Fair enough,” Isaac admitted. “I have to say that I have really enjoyed the challenge.”

That was definitely true. Isaac was very proud of what they had done on the _Melissa_. It had been a challenge and there had been lots of _very_ frustrating moments (Liam and Malia once came down to the deck where Isaac was to make sure everything was all good because of the large banging and relentless cursing), but he had enjoyed it. He really took pride in sorting and fixing the things that were wrong with the ship. Even with Scott and Allison, even with Liam and Theo, and even when he was at odds with Brett.

“So… when do you think it will all be done?” Stiles asked.

“Oh, well… It depends,” replied Isaac, looking at Brett for an answer.

The thing was that the items on the long list of problems that Isaac had originally identified (which went beyond the first concerns shown by Brett about the steering and the side thrusters) had slowly been ticked off. Brett and Isaac had been successful to a point that the _Melissa_ was now safe to fly off without any major problems. There was still a very implied recommendation to stop at a major shipyard for a proper fix, but Isaac had done his best.

“Why do you ask?” Brett wanted to know as he cleaned the grease off of his hands.

“Ah, well, you see,” Stiles said as he walked into the corridor, so that he was standing in between the two other men. “I have just received comms,” he pointed at his headphones, “and apparently the last tholin trolley is on its way!” he concluded with a smile.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Stiles kept grinning. “It’ll be here in four days.”

“I see,” Isaac said flatly, panic slowly simmering under his skin and nervously tugging at his blue and gold scarf. The _Melissa_ was ready, the tholins were approaching. That only meant one thing: the _Melissa_ (and her crew) would soon be off.

“We’ll probably be done tomorrow,” Brett answered, and Isaac’s stomach did something funny.

 _Tomorrow_.

“Cool, I’ll tell Scotty,” Stiles clapped his hands as he winked. “We’ll probably be ready to leave in three or four days then!”

Stiles left with a spring, rushing towards the ship’s bridge. Brett said something or other as he turned back to work, but Isaac could only think of one thing. _Three or four days_.

Isaac was too busy thinking about that that he did not think it twice when Brett asked him to connect an adapter to the plasma wiring. _Three or four_ days. It was only when he was inside the narrow gallery, with pipes pressing him on his chest and his back, and the confusing flickering of the lights above that he realised that he had walked willingly into a cold, unwelcoming, and claustrophobic confined space.

“Brett…?” he asked, incapable of moving in to finish the job or out to get to safety.

“No, I can’t get a reading yet,” the mechanic said, busy reading something on his computer.

Isaac took a deep breath, but he could not steady his nerves. He might as well have been back in the ice mine.

“Please?”

“Isaac?” Brett asked, confused at Isaac’s plea. “Is everything okay?”

“Please, let me out.”

“What are you on about?” Brett snorted from the corridor.

“I need to get out. I’m sorry. I- I- I- won’t do it again.”

“Isaac, what’s wrong?” the mechanic was now more concerned. He rolled his computer and stood up.

“Cam, please, come and find me,” Isaac whispered, his eyes firmly shut as he regressed.

By then Brett was fully aware that something very wrong was on.

“Please I need out. Get me _out_ ,” he said as he kicked one of the pipes, the noise rattling into the corridor. “Please, please, don’t leave me here. Cam, please—”

Then a hand reached to him, grabbing him firmly by the shoulder, and yanking him out of the pipes and cables. Isaac then heard a familiar voice calling for him, asking him to calm down, to open his eyes, and to breathe with him. He also felt two strong hands gripping his shoulders, grounding him to reality. This was soon followed by the unnerving noise of an AI beeping.

“ _You are suffering from increased heart palpitations, irregular breathing and perspiration. Ship protocols—”_

“Shut it!” the same familiar voice told the computer. “Okay, Isaac, listen to my voice, please. You’re fine,” he insisted, “you’re safe. You’re out. You’re on the _Melissa_ with me. We’re at work. We’re working together. You’re safe. What did you have for breakfast?”

Isaac’s brain felt as if it had been suddenly jump-started by the random question. _Breakfast_? He had had his usual breakfast in the canteen, and then he had gone to the _Melissa_ to work. He was not in the ice mine. He was on the _Melissa_. With Brett.

“ _What_?”

When his eyes managed to focus, he noticed that Brett was looking at him right in the eye. He was very close. His hands still on his shoulders, but when the Ceresian noticed that Isaac was again aware of his surroundings, he let go and stepped back, giving him some space to breathe.

Isaac stepped back until he was resting against the wall, and he slid down until he was sitting on the floor.

“Are you okay now?” Brett asked, his face full of worry.

“I… yeah. I- erm.. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” he managed to smile. “You just panicked for a second in there. You were calling out for Cam?”

“Oh… he’s… he’s my brother?” Isaac admitted, still too hyped to filter his answers. “I mean, I may be a bit claustrophobic?”

“I think I noticed,” Brett’s smile was now more sincere, but his brow was still wrinkled with concern. “Why did you walk in there? I could have done that!”

“You asked me about my breakfast?” Isaac suddenly remembered the question.

“Yeah, well. Got your brain to focus on some random basic fact. Tends to work…”

Isaac looked at Brett with renewed curiosity. He might have stared for a second or two, until Brett smirked at him with a giddy smile. “Thank you,” he eventually said.

“Any time,” he said as he came to sit next to him, offering his hand, which Isaac took. “Whenever you need me.”

The Uranian closed his eyes and put his back against the wall. Then Brett rubbed his thumb gently on his palm, and leant over to rest his head on Isaac’s shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tracy, Josh amd Theo... and now Donovan? Uh oh...
> 
> But Chapter 11 already? how time flies! Posting is scaringly catching up with writing (although I spent a lot of time away from this fic busy with Scisaac week...), but I think that I will be able to keep up with weekly posting at least 'til xmas.


	12. Farewell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Uranian reached the Avenue a few minutes later, and he saw Brett already waiting for him in front of the canteen, as they had arranged. Isaac stopped dead in his tracks when he saw him because he looked gorgeous.
> 
> OR: Isaac and Brett go out on a date before the Melissa is ready to leave.

The last day of working on the _Melissa_ was… different. It involved more paperwork than it involved actual mechanics. Isaac went around the ship with Boyd and Brett, one double-checking and ticking things off their list, and the other stamping holos on the panels that had been repaired. Scott and Lydia walked with them during the final round, as Isaac explained all the things that they had done and the recommendations for the future.

“Please, please,” Isaac insisted, looking at Scott’s eyes, although this time he did not feel either the crippling pain or the warm fuzz anymore. “When you get to Mars take this ship to a yard and have it fixed properly. Don’t take their crap, and demand new pieces. I don’t like the thought of you being stranded somewhere in the Solar System waiting for a repair ship, floating away from the ecliptic…”

“Don’t worry, Isaac,” Scott smiled, being his usual warm and inviting self. “I’m sure you two have done a fantastic job.”

“It’s very impressive,” Lydia nodded as she peeked through the report Isaac had compiled. “Very thorough… It really puts the shipbuilders to shame.”

“Please don’t get him started with that,” Brett chipped in, knowing well what Isaac thought about shipbuilders.

“I’m still right about them,” Isaac moaned. “Whether I say it or not.”

Lydia handed over the datapad to Scott, who signed it without reading it (Lydia’s agreement was all the reassurance he needed). The captain then passed it on to Isaac, who added his signature and stamped it with his holo seal.

“Okay, I’ve sent you a copy and I’m keeping the original,” Isaac sighed as his time on the _Melissa_ came officially to an end. “I, erm.. well. I’ll see you around, I guess? Before you go?”

“Yes, sure,” Scott agreed, glancing quickly between Isaac and Lydia. “We’ll still be around for a few more days. And we’ll be back before you notice,” he concluded with a wink.

“Great, then… I’ll be off, I guess. I’ll see you tonight?” Isaac turned to Brett with a hopeful smile.

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Okay, that’s our cue, Mr Lahey,” Boyd interrupted with good humour. “Let’s get back to the workshop. Captain McCall, Ms Martin, a pleasure to work with you as always. Mr Talbot.”

“Good bye, Mr Boyd.”

With that, Isaac and Boyd walked out of the _Melissa_ , without looking back. Boyd was quick to discuss the things that needed doing in the station (the air purifier in B3 being, again, one of the items of the day), but Isaac was not paying attention. He had run out of excuses to be on the _Melissa_ , and he was running out of options about Brett. Everything would depend on how their date that night would go. Thankfully he had it all planned.

Isaac grinned.

**~*~**

“Stop messing with my hair.”

“I’m not messing with it. I’m _fixing_ it,” Erica insisted as she carefully gelled Isaac’s curls into position.

Much like she had done before his foiled date with Scott, Erica had barged into Isaac’s cabin to make sure that he was, at least, presentable before his dinner with Brett.

“He’s already seen me covered in grease and sweat—”

“Sexy,” Erica teased, but Isaac just rolled his eyes.

“Erica…”

“You’ve told him that he had to wear something nice. You’ve told me that. You better not screw it up."

"I _won’t_ screw it up,” he growled.

“I know you won’t,” she winked as she finished Isaac’s hair.

“Are you done yet?” he sighed.

Erica looked at her friend. He was wearing a new Uranus blue and grey checked Jovian shirt, with the buttons on the side of his chest and his sleeves rolled up. He had a pair of tight-fitting black trousers on and matching shoes. At least he was not wearing his scarf today. She nodded silently.

“I’m surprised you chose that shirt.”

“Mason told me to…” he admitted. “Is there anything wrong with it?”

“Ah, that explains…”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Nothing,” the blonde woman shook her head with a grin and put her hands up. “You look great. You really do,” she added with fondness. “But let’s get going. We don’t want you to be late!”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t rush me,” Isaac let out a sigh and rolled his neck with a loud crack.

“You deserve this, Isaac,” Erica said with an unexpectedly soft tone. “He’s a great guy and he really likes you. We all know you like him too.”

“Enough of that,” Isaac cut her short before she went all mopey, because then _he_ would go mopey too. “I’m going to be late.”

Isaac rushed Erica out and locked the door behind him. With a final hug and a good-luck tap on his bottom, the planetologist waved him good-bye.

The Uranian reached the Avenue a few minutes later, and he saw Brett already waiting for him in front of the canteen, as they had arranged. Isaac stopped dead in his tracks when he saw him because he looked gorgeous. Brett had had his hair cut a bit – not too much, but enough for Isaac to notice. He was wearing a tight, red ochre short-sleeve Neptunian top, so it had buttons down the top half of the chest and a short, stiff, upright collar. He wore a series of small golden pins around one sleeve, which Isaac knew was the Belter fashion. His trousers were bright white, and tucked into his boots, which were also white.

“You look very nice today,” Brett said, looking at Isaac with a smile, and snapping him back from his thoughts.

“Well, thank you… So do you. You clean up nicely!”

“Gee, thanks,” Brett chuckled.

The two men spent a couple of seconds just looking at each other; Isaac mostly in nervous silence, Brett just giving his date a few instants to get his thoughts in order. Isaac suddenly felt very lucky.

“So, what’s the plan?” Brett spoke eventually. “What has Engineer 1st Class Lahey arranged for us tonight?” he added with a charming smile.

“Dinner first,” Isaac beamed. He had spent a long time thinking about this evening. “Then a couple of drinks, aaaand then at 22:34,” he said checking something on his buzzer, “I’ve got a surprise for you in my room.”

“22:34 exactly?” Brett sniggered.

“Yes. And we can’t be late,” the Uranian smiled with mischief as he grabbed the other man’s hand. “Let’s go.”

Hand in hand, and with two mirroring wide smiles, Isaac and Brett walked along the Avenue and into the ring.

“Where are we having dinner?” Brett asked, a bit confused, but not really objecting. “Aren’t we going to the rooftop part of the canteen?”

“That would have been nice, true,” Isaac admitted, “but we’re going for something more… _authentic_.”

“That sounds dangerous?”

“Don’t worry,” Isaac winked as he squeezed Brett’s hand. “You’re with me. I’ll take care of you.”

Brett let Isaac drag him along the calmer corridors away from the hub. Eventually, the two men made it to Block B’s pump, and from there Isaac took them down one of the residential corridors, all the way to Deucalion’s Den, of all places. Despite the slightly grotty atmosphere and the eminently local clientele, the bar was one of the best places to get a decent dinner.

“Hold on there,” the blind barman called when he heard them entering his bar. He approached them directly and rested his hand on Isaac’s shoulder.

“It’s just me,” the Uranian eventually said after the landlord failed to figure out who his client was. “I’m not wearing my scarf, that’s all. And I told you I was coming over tonight.” Isaac felt a bit naked without a scarf (which he had worn first to hide his father’s bruises and then for validation; to underline that he was an engineer and that he had achieved that on his own), but he wanted Brett to see him outside their shared working world – he had really meant it when he had said that he would let Brett know more about himself.

“Ah, Chief of Engineering!” Deucalion patted Isaac’s shoulder before turning back to his bar. “You did indeed. I have everything ready.”

“What is this place?” Brett whispered.

“You brought a Belter to my bar?” Deucalion sneered as he identified Brett’s accent, surprising the mechanic with his keen and sharp hearing.

“ _Yes_ ,” Isaac replied, rolling his eyes. “Now, if you please could let us in. We came for dinner, after all.”

“Of course,” the former pilot smiled as he stepped to the side so his customers could walk in. He directed them towards a table in the corner.

“Okay,” Brett smiled as he looked around the small bar, his curiosity only increasing by the second at the sight of the peculiar clientele, the old-school décor, and the surprisingly clear view of the Milky Way out of the porthole. “Now, seriously; what is this place?”

“Two pints,” Deucalion interrupted, placing two large glasses on their table. “Food will be ready in a second.”

“Before I explain, let’s have a drink,” Isaac said as he grabbed his glass. Brett soon did the same. “Are you ready for your full-on Beacon H night with me?”

“Do you know how long I’ve been ready for this?” Brett smirked, making his date blush.

They clinked their glasses before Isaac could reply, and had a long sip of their lemon hooch, which was bitter and sweet, and a tad sour. It also had a strong punch to it, and no small amount of fizz. Isaac had to stifle a laugh when he saw Brett’s face trying to cope with all those sensations in one single gulp.

“What in space is _that_?” Brett tried to fight off a fit of cough.

“That’s hooch,” Isaac said with a knowing smile as Brett stared into his glass. “Grapes and cereal are not the best hydroponic crops, so we have to brew our alcohol out of other stuff. Mostly lemons, pears, and apples. We do things also with honey too,” he admitted.

“Earth, you should market this,” Brett said after a smaller sip.

“I’m not going to say that alcohol brewing is illegal, because it definitely isn’t,” Isaac explained vaguely and with no small amount of local pride. “But it’s not the main economic purpose of the station.”

“So you’re keeping this local?”

“Yes.”

“Like your peaches and your honey?” Brett smirked.

“You’re getting the grasp of being a Koop, I think,” Isaac conceded with a wink.

Soon after, Deucalion came back with their meal, which included more mackerel (this time with noodles in some tangy sauce) and, to the barman’s credit, some extra smaller bites, which Isaac was very pleased to see made Brett’s eyes go wide. Apparently, he had never tried such Kuiper delicacies as honey-baked aubergines, spiced leeks, or butternut squash bubble (which was a ball of cooked squash wrapped in a cheese pastry). Isaac explained the various dishes and hinted, in a low voice, that half of that stuff was technically not in season, but that he and Deucalion had an agreement when it came to accessing the hydroponics bay.

Over their dinner, the conversation was smooth and light. Brett knew that Isaac did not speak much about his life on Oberon, so he never went there, but the Uranian had lots to say anyways about Beacon H, about Mason and Erica, and about Boyd and Braeden. Brett was happy to talk about the crew of the Melissa, and about his many odd jobs across the Solar System. They even had time to talk about what a fantastic job they had done with the _Melissa_ and to laugh about that time Brett pranked Isaac with the cable on the ceiling.

“Oh, that was funny.”

“If you wanted to see me without my shirt on, you only had to ask,” Isaac said with a confidence he had not had back then.

“Oh, really? I wonder what would have happened if I had done that?” Brett teased.

“We’ll never know now.”

There was a tense pause as they both remembered what had happened soon after that, when Brett had been more direct.

“I’m sorry,” Isaac muttered as he put his fork down.

“Hey, no need for that again,” Brett said with his usual smile, holding Isaac’s hand and squeezing his fingers. Isaac looked up and saw Brett blushing slightly.

“I’m not the easiest person to be around.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I would not want to be around anyone else,” Brett reassured him. “In fact, I’m sure I’ve told you already.”

Isaac felt a warm glow inside his chest again. He was going deep into this, but he was beginning to believe that he did not care. He definitely liked being around Brett. Then his buzzer pinged repeatedly, and Isaac checked the time.

“Oh, we better get going.”

“Are you going to tell me now what’s going on at 22:34?” Brett smirked.

“That’d spoil the surprise,” Isaac mirrored his grin.

“So we’re going now? To whatever this surprise is?”

“Two shots first,” Isaac called Deucalion. “And then we’ll get going.”

After downing the sweet and strong honey liquor, Isaac paid for their dinner and took Brett back to the ring, but instead of turning right towards the hub, Isaac went left, to the far side of the ring.

“Where are we going?” Brett asked, burning with curiosity.

“We’re going to my room,” Isaac said with a cocky smile.

“Oh, I like the sound of that.”

“Yeah. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

The corridor that linked Blocks A and B was one of the most quiet sections of the station, as most traffic went through the hub, so Isaac and Brett walked along very close together, shoulders brushing, mostly on their own.

“What _is_ my surprise?” Brett insisted.

“You don’t really understand how surprises work, do you?”

Brett bit his lip at this, and Isaac had to stop himself before he pinned him against the wall only to cup his face and pull him for a kiss.

“It’s my telescope,” Isaac caved in. “And that’s all you need to know.”

“Oh?” Brett had not expected that, but Isaac kept on walking ahead.

Eventually they made it back to Isaac’s room. Brett had been there once before, but neither felt the need to remember that evening. The Ceresian leant against the wall of the cabin, resting on his elbow, as he tenderly brushed his fingers along Isaac’s arm.

“So… are you inviting me in?” he asked with a naughty smile.

“No,” Isaac chuckled. “I just need to get my telescope.”

“Your _telescope_ ,” he deadpanned.

“Yes, you asteroid. I told you,” Isaac shook his head as his door slid open and he walked in. “I’ve got it all ready.”

“So you mean a real telescope?” Brett asked again.

Isaac walked out of his cabin carrying his case, and tapped it as he smiled. “Ready.”

“And when you said we were coming to your room so you could show me your ‘telescope’ you really meant a telescope?” Brett chuckled again, because he had never expected Isaac to reach such an adorable level of endearing dorkiness.

It took Isaac a millisecond to get Brett’s meaning, and he went deep beetroot. “That’s very bold of you, to assume whatever your mind pulled out of its gutter, Talbot,” he reprimanded his date with a not-so-innocent smile as he shut his pod. “But I don’t think you’re there yet.”

Brett hung his head and shook it as he smiled before following Isaac away from his pod and into the elevator to the core.

“Okay, I’m very sorry I jumped to conclusions,” Brett apologised as they descended to the low-gravity station core. “But can you please tell me what the surprise is now? Where are we going with your telescope?”

“You’re about to see in a minute,” Isaac said as he pulled Brett by the hand into the lift.

Unsurprisingly, the Sun OB was empty. As Isaac set up the telescope tripod, Brett floated around the dome, looking out into space.

“This is the second low-G date we’ve had,” the mechanic said.

“I think the first one was not a date,” Isaac replied as he carefully mounted the telescope and calibrated it. “It was more of a you barging into my secret hideout.”

“And how is that different to what we’re doing now?” Brett said as he floated in the dome.

“This time I invited you to my secret hideout,” Isaac clarified smiling to himself, knowing that Brett was floating high above looking at him.

“Are you going to tell me now what we are looking at?” the Ceresian pushed himself until he was just by Isaac, keeping a hand on his shoulder so as not to float away. The Uranian immediately felt the same electric sensation running through his body, widening his smile.

“Well,” Isaac tapped a few things onto his telescope which moved ever so slightly, “I know there is one thing that you’ve always wanted but that you haven’t had a chance to do, and that perhaps I can help you with,” he added mysteriously.

Isaac gave the observation bay’s AI a few extra instructions. The lights dimmed, the rotation stopped, and the polarised shield of the dome shimmered.

“Okay, so, look now here,” Isaac pulled Brett very carefully towards him, so that he had his chest against Brett’s back, throwing his arms around Brett’s shoulders, and resting his head next to his. Now Isaac was whispering into Brett’s ear and brushing his cheeks against the other man’s hair. He could feel Brett’s warmth even through their clothes.

“What am I looking at?” Brett turned his head. His face was now a few centimetres away from Isaac’s. Their eyes were fixed on each other’s. Their lips very nearly brushing.

“Look and you’ll _see_ ,” Isaac smiled, and Brett did as he was told. “So, if I got everything right, you should be looking at two small discs; one bright and grey, and the other, much larger, shines off with blue and white and—”

“That’s _Earth_?” Brett asked, his voice suddenly caught in emotion.

“Yeah, well,” Isaac shrugged while Brett kept looking into the telescope. “You’ve always told me how much you want to go and visit it, and how you’ve never had a chance. And, well… I know it’s not _perfect_ , and we’re very far away, so I’m sorry for that. But I thought this was the best chance we could have to visit Earth together?”

Brett’s eyes were fixed on the image amplified by the telescope. Isaac knew what he would be seeing (he had spent too many hours himself staring at the First Planet). Brett would be seeing the Home World, dancing around the Sun, dozens of AUs away, with the Moon orbiting around it. Brett would be seeing the white light that bounced off the clouds and the blue glint of the seas. Isaac did not know if Brett had seen it before, but he had gone mute in surprise. The blond engineer felt a proud smile grow on his face, so he let go of Brett, allowing him to enjoy the view of Earth. But when Brett noticed Isaac floating away he turned around, still in awed shock, and pulled Isaac close to him, his hands around his waist, and his knees hooked around his.

“This is the most incredible thing anybody has ever done for me,” Brett admitted with an incredulous smile, pulling Isaac further towards him. “Thank you so, _so_ much.”

Isaac was about to brush it off and shrug, but he did not have a chance, because Brett then kissed him.

For the last few days Isaac had only been able to think about that, about how it would feel to kiss him; to be kissed by him. And it had just happened. It was only the briefest of kisses, and Isaac had hardly any time to think about how soft Brett’s lips were when the Ceresian spoke again.

“I swear to space, Isaac, this has been the single sweetest thing ever. That was incredible. _You_ are incredible,” he said with a big smile. “I mean… that…”

“I guess you liked it then?”

Brett was beaming at him, his blue eyes radiating and his smile wide. Isaac felt his heart skip a beat – he needed more of Brett in his life. He needed to make Brett this happy more often. And before he could say anything, Brett pulled him in for another kiss, only this time Isaac managed to react. He wrapped his arms around Brett, one hand climbing up to the back of his head and the other making its way under his shirt. He felt Brett’s hands moving around him, caressing his back. Isaac deepened the kiss as they floated away in the low-G observation bay, illuminated only by the dim glow of the telescope controls, the myriad of stars that shone through the dome, and the distant Sun.

**~*~**

In the morning, Isaac woke up in a cloud of joy. His date with Brett had been a tremendous success: dinner, drinks, Earth spotting in the observation bay, and late-night walk back to his room. Best of all, they had _finally_ kissed. Not just once, mind; they had kissed over and over again, floating in the OB, until they flew into the dome, and he bumped his head. Then again back in his cabin from the moment they walked through the door. For a second he wondered if it all had been a dream, if this had been yet another of his nightmares; maybe he was about to wake up still in the ice shoot back on Oberon, because he was not the kind of person who deserved to have amazing dates with a gorgeous blue-eyed mechanic. But Isaac immediately noticed an arm curling around his midriff and pulling him towards a tall, warm, toned body.

“Stop wriggling,” Brett said, mostly into his pillow. He was sleeping face down, with an arm under the pillow and the other now firmly curled around Isaac.

Isaac turned around and settled nicely next to Brett, skin on skin, thinking that he could easily get used to that. Brett turned his head so he could land a sleepy kiss on Isaac’s cheek. The Uranian then shifted further until Brett turned on his side with a groan.

“What are you doing?” Brett asked as he sensed Isaac mingling their legs together and scooting himself even closer.

“Good morning to you too.”

Brett opened his eyes for the briefest instant. The cabin was dimly illuminated with a warm orange light.

“I like it when you smile,” the mechanic eventually said.

“I like it when you wake up in my bed.”

“This is the first time that’s happened. How are you sure that you’ll like it the twentieth time?” he asked as he shifted slightly.

“I guess we’ll just have to do it twenty times and then I’ll have an answer for you,” Isaac chuckled as he pressed himself closer to Brett, pulling their hips together and carefully passing his fingers through his hair.

“You’re needy,” Brett grinned, and Isaac blushed and tried to push himself back, but Brett cuddled him, not letting go. “I’m not saying that’s bad. I’m just surprised.”

“Why?” Isaac asked, his eyes fixed on Brett’s bare chest and not looking up.

“You are always so very aware of people in your space, that’s all. I’ve noticed.”

“I told you I don’t mind it when it’s you…”

“Just needed to check you were still alright with that.”

Isaac looked up and pulled Brett in for a kiss.

Thankfully, Isaac had the rest of the day off, and Brett had shore leave since the _Melissa_ was now fit for flying. When eventually Isaac let go of Brett, he walked to his food processing pod and prepared them two bowls of porridge. Brett was speaking about all the things that they could do that afternoon if Isaac was not too busy, because he was suddenly very aware that there were a few things that he liked and that he wanted to share with Isaac.

The Uranian agreed to everything Brett suggested.

Brett beamed back and walked over to give him a loud kiss as he went on about his favourite movie that he wanted Isaac to watch with him, and there was also a list of songs, that were soon played by Isaac’s cabin AI. By mid-morning Brett said that he had to go back to his ship so he could at least get changed into other clothes. Isaac groaned, but let him go. The Ceresian gave him one last kiss, and they agreed to meet outside the Canteen in a couple of hours.

The moment the door slid shut, Isaac quickly tapped a detailed message to Mason and a more summarised one to Erica, both of whom had been buzzing him all morning demanding details about their date. It was not long until he got an incoming call from the observatory.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Brett and Isaac went for lunch to the canteen, up to the roof terrace that had the skylight looking onto the station’s core. They later went to one of the Market Blocks, where Isaac knew they could spend a couple of hours playing hologames, and then they went to the _Melissa_ , to Brett’s cabin, where they watched a couple of movies together on the Ceresian’s bed.

While the date they had the previous night had been unique and special, Isaac’s day off with Brett clearly marked a turning point in their relationship. All the cautious shoulder brushing and the occasional hand holding that had been the extent of their physicality until then were very quickly substituted with more obvious public displays of affection, and Isaac did not care. Isaac wanted everyone to see how happy he was. Even when they bumped into Braeden and Erica out in the Avenue (or when inevitably Scott, Lydia and Stiles saw them on the ship scurrying to the mechanic’s cabin), Isaac did not budge away or avoid his friends’ looks.

By the evening, however, the high they had been riding soon subsided. When they finished their drink in the canteen, Brett’s buzzer began to beep, notifying him that dinner on the _Melissa_ was almost ready.

“I think I’ve hogged you enough for… erm… twenty hours,” Isaac grinned after checking the time. “You better head back to your ship before you get bored of me.”

“I somehow think that will not happen,” Brett chuckled as he laced his hands behind Isaac’s shoulders.

“You say that now,” the engineer hooked his thumbs in the loops of Brett’s trousers, and avoided meeting his eyes.

“I really mean it, Isaac. If I’ve learnt one thing from the last day, which confirms what I had guessed during the last weeks, is that I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of you.”

Something inside Isaac refused to believe that, a deeply-ingrained insecurity that had ruled his life for the last fifteen years. However, the warm feeling in his chest, and the soft contact of Brett’s skin on his told him otherwise.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Isaac concluded as he reluctantly pushed himself away.

“Of course.”

“Do you want to grab lunch?”

“Yup.”

Brett pulled him in for a last kiss, cupping Isaac’s face, while Isaac put his own hands on Brett’s waist one last time.

**~*~**

The last day of the _Melissa’s_ stay on Beacon H was odd. Isaac was back to work, spending most of his morning filing backlogged paperwork and helping Boyd with the robotic arms he was still busy with. Despite the accumulated workload, he did not care; he felt completely elated because of the extended date he had had with Brett. However, there was also the dreaded deadline on the horizon when he and the rest of the _Melissa_ would pack and leave.

As they had agreed the night before, the two met for lunch in the canteen. Greenberg and Boyd sat with them and were soon so deep in their conversation about ship mechanics and station robotics that Malia and Erica avoided sitting at their table altogether. It felt completely natural now, to have Brett around for lunch, talking with his friends. Sadly, and to make things worse, Isaac had to cut his lunch break short, because Hayden and Derek needed to see him, so he gave Brett a quick kiss and left him with his two colleagues.

When he got to Derek’s office, it was clear that Braeden had been arguing that the tholin compressor that Erica had commandeered from one of the mining stations had been interfering with some long-distance signals, which she counted as a security hazard. She had told Derek, but according to Hayden, who had taken the time to request a report from the mining station about the compressor, that had nothing to do with the compressor.

“Thank space you’re here,” Hayden huffed when Isaac walked through the door of Derek’s office. Other than the Commander, the Administrator and Braeden, Erica and her mother (who were directly involved in this) were also there.

“All I’m saying,” Veronica Reyes continued with whatever conversation they had been having before the engineer arrived, “is that the connection with the outer drilling stations and the observatory flickered _precisely_ when that thing hummed.”

Hayden bit her tongue and then looked at Isaac pleadingly. “Isaac, please explain that a tholin compressor does _not_ emit signals.”

“But it hummed!” Erica insisted, siding with her mother. “I was supervising the last batch when I was speaking with my mother and then she noticed the interference. It happened at the same time.”

“What kind of machine interferes with radio signals?” Braeden wanted to know. “If it’s going to work like this I’d rather have it off station.”

“Isaac?” Derek, who seemed tired of the argument, focused the debate.

“Ah, well, this I don’t know,” he replied cautiously as he fiddled with the end of his scarf. “Do you want me to go and have a look?”

“Isaac, you know tholin compressors do not emit signals. It must be something else!” Hayden insisted. “What else on the station could do that?”

The engineer bit his lip as he scrunched his face, deep in thought.

“A number of things… included but not limited to illegally-wired AIs, docked spaceship comms, and Oort radiation,” he listed. Nobody seemed happy with his answer, so he continued after a pause. “But I will go and inspect it?” The tholin compressor had been installed in one of the many orbital auxiliary pods, which meant that he would have to get into his outsuit and take a shuttle, neither of which he was very fond of.

“Thank you!” Braeden said, and the Reyes women nodded in agreement. Hayden rolled her eyes.

“But it has to be tomorrow,” Isaac warned. “Today we’re installing the new robotic arm.”

“That’s okay,” Erica added. “All the tholins have been processed. We won’t be needing it any time soon.”

“That’s done then. Keep me updated,” Derek sighed. “And now, please, everyone: go bother someone else.”

When Isaac went back to the canteen, Brett was not there anymore, so he marched to the workshop to find Greenberg so they could help Boyd installing the arm. The installation would have been pretty straight forward in normal circumstances, but Isaac and Boyd had to design a way in which they could launch the arm from an auxiliary airlock rather than the main one without jamming the replacement arm in the process. It was the kind of complex challenge that Isaac liked.

Despite the job at hand, Boyd dismissed Isaac while he did the more technical part of the job. Isaac was always ready to praise and admire his friend for his superior skill with anything that involved robots, so he happily went off to have a quick coffee. On his way to the canteen, however, Isaac noticed Theo and Liam walking out of one of the holovisual booths that lined that quiet part of the back of the Education Block.

“Hey Isaac,” Liam called him with his usual enthusiasm. Judging by the state of his collar, his dishevelled hair, and his creased service shirt, it was evident that the two of them had been doing more than watching a holo in the booth. “You going to the canteen?”

“I… I _was_?”

“Mind if we come with?” Theo asked with his best open, honest tone. Isaac knew better than to believe him, but he decided to play along. “We were going to grab a bite.”

“Yes,” Liam confirmed. “And I actually wanted to ask you something about this station, because Theo was suggesting that what Beacon H needed was a park.”

“A park?” That definitely caught his attention. Isaac vaguely remembered the open hydroponic recreational space they had on Oberon.

Intrigued by this, Isaac went on with both Theo and Liam to the canteen and had a sit-down coffee. He did this mostly out of curiosity about the possibility of having a park on Beacon H and whatever crazy ideas Liam had, although he also decided to have a closer look at Theo with Liam. Brett insisted that he was a nice guy and that he was good for Liam, and there was no denying that he was good friends with Scott. But Malia had told him that he had tried to hit on her, and then there was the incident with Hayden. Something was off about him, and Isaac was going to find out.

They had coffee and a few salty crisps as they talked about parks and biodomes and recreational hydroponics, which Liam knew not much about, but he was very keen nonetheless. He missed seeing trees when he was out travelling; apparently he had grown up in the wooded areas of Mars, and his mother had been an areobotanic curator.

All throughout their meeting, Isaac noticed how Theo genuinely _seemed_ to care for Liam. The way he looked at him definitely mirrored the way Liam looked back at Theo, and it was impossible to deny that the _Melissa’s_ security officer had fallen hard for the captain. Theo would keep an arm around Liam’s shoulders as the Martian explained something about trees, and then Liam would pat Theo’s knee and ask him to chip in. As far as Isaac could tell, they really were a cute couple.

After a while, Isaac learnt that Liam was not as naïve as it seemed at first. He might have been oblivious about Hayden, but perhaps she had not been direct enough. While Theo was extremely confident (and well aware of it), it was not as if Liam let him boss him around. Isaac had seen Liam voicing his disagreement a couple of times, and Theo was clever enough not to press when Liam was too pig-headed. Brett had mentioned something about explosive anger issues, which was why he tried to vent as much steam as he could in the exercise rooms.

Overall, they really fit together, and had it not been for what Isaac knew, he would have been extremely happy for them.

Eventually Boyd buzzed him, as they needed his help for the final engineering details. He excused himself and said his goodbyes to Liam and Theo. Liam waved him with a smile, and Theo did the same, but Isaac knew better. He knew it was a façade. Isaac gave Theo a flat grin and, for the briefest of instants, the calm poise of the captain of the _Chimera_ flickered.

 _Yeah well, I don’t like you either,_ Isaac thought as he grinned. _But I know you’re full of shit_.

**~*~**

“What’s the problem?” Brett asked after slurping the noodles from his soup, which was quite difficult to do in the low gravity of the hydroponics bay.

“Nothing…” Isaac lied. He had been thinking about his earlier encounter with Theo.

“Isn’t a bit too early in our relationship for this to happen?”

“Oh, this is a relationship now?” Isaac smirked; his worries vanished. It was not possible to deny that there was _something_ between them. Isaac did not have much experience with relationships, but if it was with Brett, he was happy to jump at the opportunity.

“I at least hope so,” the mechanic smiled.

“So I’m your boyfriend now?” Isaac teased, really, _really_ hoping Brett would say yes.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Brett pushed himself so he was floating closer to Isaac.

“I think I’d like that,” Isaac said with fake nonchalance.

“That’s good,” Brett added nervously, “because as boyfriends there is something important I have to ask you.”

**~*~**

The morning came when the _Melissa_ would leave. Isaac hardly slept at all during the night, thinking about Brett’s question.

On the one hand, he had a responsibility on Beacon H. It was not as if he could just leave, leaving Greenberg and Boyd to deal with everything. There were his bees too. Someone would take care of them because they were essential for the colony’s survival, but he was not happy with that prospect. There were also Mason and the Hewitts, and Erica, Derek and Braeden. Was he ready to leave them behind? He would not leave for good, true, but still. Of course, there was always the remote possibility that Cam would come looking for him. If he left, how was his brother going to find him?

On the other, he had been given a chance to become a spaceman and travel around the Solar System. He definitely was entitled to some leave, which he had been saving in case he was granted the permit to visit Earth, but he was ready to gamble his unlikely chances to get it for a certain trip with Brett. An entire trip to Mars with Brett was enough incentive to make Isaac’s stomach flip.

And then again, the _Melissa_ was captained by Scott. Isaac may be ready to accept the fact that Scott was only going to be his friend, but it would certainly test his patience and his resolution. That would not be fair on Brett at all.

Of course, there was the minor but key issue that the _Melissa_ was going to stop first at Neptune and then at Oberon.

So Isaac stayed in bed, listening to his music, and then went on to take a long shower, thinking as the music still played.

 _The arching sky is calling, spacemen back to their trade. ALL HANDS! STAND BY! FREE FALLING! And the lights below us fade_.

By the time he was out of the shower he knew what he had to do.

**~*~**

When Isaac reached the Oortside docks, the _Melissa_ was ready to leave. Braeden, Scott, Lydia and Brett were lined outside, waiting for him.

“All ready, Isaac?” Braeden asked.

“Yes, sorry. I had erm… I had to grab a few things,” he replied as he shifted the bag that hung from his shoulder uncomfortably.

“Great, let’s do this,” Scott exclaimed with his usual smile.

Isaac left his bags outside the ship and went in for a quick round of the _Melissa_ with his datapad, quickly making sure that all the holo seals on the repairs were untouched and that the spaceship was, in fact, ready to leave. Lydia handed him a form, which he and Braeden signed and stamped, and which he then returned to Scott. Braeden saluted formally for an instant and then said her goodbyes to the familiar crew before heading back to the Security Block.

“It was great to see you again, Isaac,” Scott said, still a bit awkward around the engineer, but Isaac offered him a smile and extended his hand.

“It’s always a pleasure.”

“We’ll be back soon, Mr Lahey,” Lydia said next, also shaking his hand. “Thank you for all your help.”

The captain and the commissioner headed back into the ship, leaving only one member of their crew outside with Isaac. He was about to say something, when they heard a stampede of footsteps trotting their way.

“Wait!”

Brett and Isaac turned around to see Liam and Theo running back towards the _Melissa_.

“They’re not leaving without you,” Isaac said.

“I know, I know,” Liam said once he reached the airlock. “But I had to get something.”

“He left his codes in my cabin,” Theo stage whispered.

“Don’t tell them that!” Liam growled.

“That’s okay,” Brett grinned. “It’s not as if this has not happened before.

“Hang on,” Isaac questioned and pointed at Theo. “You too are going?”

“Yeah,” the captain of the _Chimera_ said with a smile. “I’m taking leave to go with this one,” he added ruffling Liam’s hair.

“I want him to see Mars,” Liam beamed as he reached for Theo’s hand. “He’s never been to the Inner Planets, and they don’t need him on his mining station, right?”

“No,” Theo agreed. “I think that because the tholin compressor is now here they need fewer people back at the cracker.”

“Are you coming?” Liam asked with a hopeful smile.

“Just give us a minute,” Brett said as he waved Liam away. The security officer waved goodbye at Isaac before disappearing into the ship. Theo did the same, although Isaac did not return the farewell.

“So…” Brett said after a few silent seconds.

“So…” Isaac looked down at his shoes. He felt Brett’s hands searching for his, and he let him hold them.

“It’s okay if you cannot come, Isaac,” Brett said in the same warm tome Isaac remembered from the first time they met on the _Melissa_ , answering for Isaac the question he asked the night before. “I can understand that. You have a big responsibility here.”

“You know that I’d love to go with you, right?” Isaac’s throat felt tight, and he squeezed Brett’s fingers.

“I know. And you know that I _will_ come back, right?”

Isaac went very silent. That was and had always been his greatest fear. With Scott the pain was understandable and bearable because he had never actually got any far with the captain, but with Brett, with whom he had shared so much in such a short time, he felt a crippling terror clutching his chest.

“I will not be coming back with a Martian girlfriend,” Brett reassured him, stepping closer and cautiously into Isaac’s space. “I want to be with you, you know that, right? It’s just… it’s just that we’ve had some very bad timing,” he concluded. Isaac could hear the smile in his voice.

“I have something for you though,” the Uranian said after a pause. Brett let go of his hands as Isaac bent over to pick his bag up. He unzipped it and began to show its contents to Brett. “This is, erm… well. I’ve got you a framed picture of Earth from the night we were in the OB,” Isaac pulled the picture and handed it over without looking at Brett. “I’ve also got you a jar of my space honey, and a bottle of Deucalion’s hooch. And I… erm… I also got this for you.”

Brett took the holo disc that Isaac held in his hand, gently brushing their fingers together.

“And this is…?”

“That’s a recording of _The Green Hills of Earth_.”

Isaac dared look up, and he saw Brett’s blue eyes waiting for him. He knew how important that song was for Isaac, even if he did not know all the details.

“Thank you so much.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Isaac managed to pull a smile, even if it did not reach his eyes.

Behind them, the _Melissa_ ’s engines warmed up, and the warning lights of the airlock flared green.

“I think that’s them calling me,” Brett said, looking back.

“You will come back, right?” Isaac insisted as he handed over the bag with all his gifts to Brett.

The mechanic slung the bag over his shoulder before pulling Isaac into a warm, tight and comforting embrace. Isaac hugged Brett back, burying his face on his shoulder and leaving a couple of wet marks on the shirt. The Ceresian kissed Isaac’s neck and ear softly as he raked his fingers through his blond curls.

“I’m only a call away, Isaac. Whenever you want, just call me. And I’ll be back soon enough. Even if it’s not on the _Melissa_.”

“Don’t give me clichés,” Isaac snorted, rubbing his eye.

“Yeah well,” Brett grinned. “It’s still true.”

They looked at each other one last time, before Isaac pulled Brett needily for a last kiss. Then they slowly pulled apart and, without saying anything else, Brett walked into the airlock and disappeared into the _Melissa_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so lots happen in this chapter, and I made another drawing. I'm so happy that the boys go out on a date -- but then the ship has to go and Brett leaves Isaac behind? ARGGGGH. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I do this to you? Because of storytelling.
> 
> But I hope it was good????
> 
> Also, the next five chapters will continue to follow Isaac and then, for the second half of the fic, we'll be following Brett (and scott, and Liam and Lydia) on the Melissa. Five Fridays from today is Christmas and I may take a little break, and then we'll stat again in the new year!


	13. Adjustments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the Melissa got further and further away from Beacon H the radio signal that transmitted their communications got delayed further and further, limited (as they were) by the speed of light. Right now, while Brett was still in the Outer Rim, the lag was close to forty minutes each way. By the time he got to Mars, the lag would be close to seven hours.
> 
> OR: Isaac has to cope with the aftermath of his boyfriend leaving on the Melissa and with the repercussions of some unsettling revelations

“Don’t say it,” Erica threatened.

Erica was having breakfast in the canteen with Isaac and Boyd. Five days had passed since the _Melissa_ had left, and they had slowly returned to their old routine, including Isaac being moody. The novelty this time was that the reason was that Brett rather than Scott was the one who had gone.

“But it’s true!” Isaac moaned, eyeing Boyd’s breakfast pitifully.

“We don’t need to hear it.”

“He’s your boyfriend and you two are so into each other it is scary.” Boyd added, siding with Erica, and Isaac glared at him for it. “But can you please spare us the moaning because he’s gone? It’s like with Scott all over again”

In all fairness, Isaac was trying his best to adjust to these new circumstances. The day after the _Melissa_ left, Isaac had been suspiciously calm. It took him until the morning after for the repressed overabundance of feelings to burst. On the one hand, he was better off than he was with his big Scott crush, because at least this time he knew that Brett liked him back. Isaac could not stop remembering every moment they shared on the _Melissa_ , in the hydroponics bay, the observation dome, and (perhaps most important) his bedroom. And they sent each other long video messages that Isaac played when he was back in his pod. But despite all of Brett’s reassurances and promises and kisses, Isaac could not help feeling a bit overwhelmed. Considering Isaac’s past experience both with people making him promises to come back for him _and_ crushes on crewmen, the crippling doubt about his own worthiness and the fear of Brett not coming back were still there.

Overall, Isaac was torn by the excitement of having a boyfriend again and the anguish caused by the evident lack of said boyfriend by his side. The _Melissa_ was heading back to Mars. That was a seven-week one-way trip. Isaac had just got himself a boyfriend and he was not going to see him at least in three months.

“But this time he actually knows about me, which means that rather than me moping around we could be in my room right now doing… stuff.”

“I am very sure you two still do _stuff_ ,” Erica snorted, only to see Isaac go crimson.

“Not at breakfast…” Boyd complained.

“And anyways,” he ignored them and looked back at Boyd’s plate. “It reminds me so much of him… He _really_ likes the—”

“Syllable game!” Erica suddenly exclaimed, taking both Isaac and Boyd by surprise. “It is time, friend, to play your game once… more. Plus, Boyd will play with us too. Right, Boyd?”

“You know, I may play this time,” Boyd suddenly spoke carefully, counting his syllables, and very relieved to be moving on from their earlier discussion. “But you know that he is quite good at this, right? And Brett has only got one… sound. You will not catch him with that.”

“I dare you, Ise,” Erica grinned. “For the sake of all of us. Stop it with Brett. We know he is hot but that he is not with you now. This is your chance to show off.”

Isaac took the bait and he smiled coyly.

“Oh, but Erica!” he said with mock panic. “You want to beat me at my own game?”

“What is it that Brett likes then?” she taunted, jabbing her finger on the table next to Boyd’s plate of pastries.

“Brett was a great fan of the peach treats I got him from the man who bakes sweets right there by the bar,” Isaac said with his smuggest grin as he took a big spoonful of his porridge. “And now,” he continued with a full mouth, “you have been cursed with the game of the one sound word.”

“Urgh… how—you are a twit,” Erica grinned as she took a bite from her pear. “But thanks to this Oort-spawn of a game you are not a moody—”

“ _Moo-dy!_ ” Boyd and Isaac shouted in unison, and Erica huffed.

“That was a good effort, though,” Boyd nodded. “You surprised me with ‘twit’.”

“Yeah, me too… You’ve been reading some aothreean literature again?” Isaac arched an eyebrow. For some reason, Erica had always been a fan of early space-age stories from the station’s bibliographic repository.

“Don’t give me that sly grin, Lahey. You’re the one who likes Terran stories about vampires and werewolves in high schools.”

“ _Liked_ ,” Isaac lied, because even if he had not had any time to read in a long while, he did like those old stories. They had no point of comparison with graphic tales of space explorers, mind you. Those were something else.

“Anyways, it’s not that,” Erica said as she finished her pear. “I just heard it from the docked crews of the drilling stations. I thought it was funny.”

“Urgh…”

That was another source of grief for Isaac. Not only were the crews of the _Chimera_ , the _Wendigo_ , and the third ship that had brought tholins for the _Melissa_ still docked on Beacon H; one more brand-new ship had just arrived from Pluto with similar obnoxious crews of Saturnians. Isaac really could not understand _why_ they were all Saturnians with annoying accents that seemed to be chums with Josh and Donovan. From what Hayden had told them they were waiting for a fifth ship coming from Makemake in order to completely renovate the trolley fleet of the outer rim.

Isaac wished they would all go already.

“They are not all that bad, Isaac,” Boyd shook his head.

“Well, my experience would prove otherwise. They’re all Gasers anyways,” he groaned with mild disgust.

Erica and Boyd looked at each other in confusion.

“Some of your friends are Gasers too, you know?”

“Hayden’s fine. She hardly sounds like those ringtards anymore.”

Boyd’s face scrunched. “Hayden is not a Saturnian?”

“We’re talking about us?” Erica pointed out.

“But you’re Jovians. You’re fine. And what are you saying about Hayden? She sounds like—like _them_?”

“I could have sworn she told me she was from Pluto.”

“Charon,” Boyd corrected. “Or at least that’s what I remember. How long have we known her?”

“I’m sorry to break this to you, but I think I can recognise a Saturnian accent,” Isaac chuckled with confidence.

“No, you can’t,” Erica rolled her eyes.

“She’s right,” Boyd agreed. That annoyed Isaac. “Hayden does not sound like a Saturnian. Neither do those crews.”

“Well,” Isaac was getting annoyed now. “I should know how ringtards speak, because my dad was a Saturnian, and I can remember how he speaks.”

“Maybe in his colony they spoke like that,” Erica said as she peeled a second pear. “Maybe he was not from one of the main colonies. But trust us, we’ve known a lot of Saturnians.”

“They do a funny thing with their R’s and their L’s, don’t they?”

“What are you on about?” Isaac leant forward. “You’re telling me now Theo is not a ringtard?”

“He might be,” Boyd said calmly, “but he does not sound like the Saturnians _I_ know.”

“I always thought that all these crews were from Neptune,” Erica guessed.

“They are _not_ Icers,” Isaac was suddenly very offended by that suggestion. Neptunians were not Uranians, but were the closest best thing.

“Maybe they’re all from Charon after all,” Boyd tried to calm the discussion. “The inner rim has a lot of new mixed colonies.”

“You are pulling my leg,” Isaac insisted, because none of that made sense.

“No, honest to space, Isaac,” Boyd insisted with an incredulous smile. “Before migrating on the _Talia_ I helped my dad with the Lagrangian stations of the Saturn system, and we went to the moon colonies. Trust me; I’ve met enough Saturnians.”

Erica and Boyd went on for a short while completely dismantling Isaac’s deep-ingrained beliefs that he was good at distinguishing accents and that he knew what Saturnians sounded like. But then again, it was his maternal grandparents who lived on Io. The full story was a bit more complex, because they were not Saturnians originally: his mother Rose and her parents had been Uranians from Miranda who moved to Io. It was on Io that Rose met Isaac’s father, where they got married, and had Cam, before moving back to Uranus when his father got the job as chief hydro of Oberon. Isaac had always assumed that his father was from Io, but he had never dared talk with him about it. Maybe Cam knew better. This, of course, meant that he was not really sure of where his father was from but, as with many other things about his father, Isaac was beyond caring and did not really want to know.

“Well, that does not change a thing. I don’t like them, wherever they are from.”

“So you’re not projecting?” Erica asked, but it was Boyd who fulminated her with a glare, because the last thing they wanted was for Isaac to kick off.

“Childhood traumas aside, Theo, Tracy, Josh and Donovan have proved themselves to be the biggest asteroids this side of the Belt.”

“So your hatred is justified?”

“Proven by experience. Validated by Braeden,” Isaac concluded licking his spoon clean.

“Just don’t punch them, please?” Erica begged, and Isaac actually felt bad when he saw his two friends looking at him with expectation.

The engineer pushed his bowl and his spoon away and adjusted his service scarf before raking his fingers through his hair.

“You have an application for Earth,” Boyd reminded him. “And think of Brett.”

“I’m not a fucking time-bomb,” Isaac snapped.

“We know you’re not,” Boyd offered with a smile.

There was a short pause, and then Isaac spoke again. “You really are some very annoying friends.”

They soon drifted off to other, more amenable topics, including the latest holo movie that was _finally_ being screened in the colony. But Isaac only paid half attention. He had so much to tell Brett later that day.

**~ * ~**

When his shift was over, Isaac walked into his pod and his AI told him that he had received a message, so he was quick to kick his boots off, hang his scarf carefully on its hook, and ask the computer to play it. In an instant, Brett’s holographic projection filled the room, and Isaac felt his lips curling into a smile.

“Hello, gorgeous,” Brett’s recorded message began. “How was your day?”

As the _Melissa_ got further and further away from Beacon H the radio signal that transmitted their communications got delayed further and further, limited (as they were) by the speed of light. Planets and main colonies had quantum relays that shortened the lag to a degree, but the distances of the Solar System were too vast. Right now, while Brett was still in the Outer Rim, the lag was close to forty minutes each way. By the time he got to Mars, the lag would be close to seven hours.

During the day, while he was working, Isaac sent him long texts, with all his thoughts and questions. Sometimes Brett replied with a similarly long message, which Isaac got to read later. Some others (especially when he knew Isaac had finished his shift), Brett recorded a holomessage.

“So, as you know, we have just left Ultima Thule, your grand metropolis,” Brett’s holographic face chuckled because Ultima Thule was not much bigger than Oberon, but it was the best the Outer Rim could offer. “I read very carefully the list of things you suggested and, let me tell you; it sounds like you, Mason, and Corey have a blast every time you come here. You really had boys’ wild nights out here!”

Mason, Corey, and Isaac went to Ultima Thule every time they were on leave together. Their trips to the capital had become their favourite holiday. Ultima Thule had more shops, more restaurants and a museum. It also had a tag-crosse dome.

“We didn’t have enough time to do all the things on your list, but I really liked the colony. I can’t wait until we go there together.”

“Me either,” Isaac smiled in agreement, even if he knew he was speaking to a recorded holo. This way of communicating was not ideal, and Isaac was increasingly frustrated at the lag, but there was nothing he could do without a planetary quantum relay.

Erica and Boyd’s reaction that morning had been a bit of an exaggeration. All things considered, Isaac was coping quite well – or at least that was what he thought when he watched Brett’s holos in his pod. While they were travelling, Brett had little to do on the _Melissa_ , which is why he sent him messages every now and then, even if to show Isaac that he too was not enjoying them being apart.

“Also, you’ve been telling me about Mason and Corey this, and Corey and Mason that, but I need more details,” Brett said with a serious face, and Isaac giggled and rolled his eyes. “How did they meet? When? Did you like him at first? I can totally imagine you being an annoying older brother, pestering Corey for no particular reason.”

“I never did that!” Isaac barked in laughter as he made a mental not to tell Brett in his reply his long and unnecessarily detailed explanation about how Corey and Mason had met.

“Oh, and the last thing you told me was that Braeden wanted to see you? What did she want? Is she as scary as she seems? I’ve only met her briefly that day at lunch time and then when she came on the _Melissa_ for the exit forms, but that is a woman I would never like to cross.”

“Anyways,” Brett continued. “I guess I’ll hear from you after dinner. I really, really miss you, babe. Can’t wait to see your message!” he concluded with a wink, and the holoprojection faded.

The AI beeped once, indicating that the message had ended, and then it asked Isaac if he wanted to send a reply. He walked over to get a glass of water before sitting back on his bed.

“Hey, handsome,” Isaac began to record his own reply. “First of all, Braeden’s job is to be scary, so I’m sure she’ll be very happy to know that you know your place when it comes to her! And what she wanted,” he said with a mischievous glint in his eye, the kind which Brett was always suspicious of, “was to moan about the Saturnian crews. So it’s not just me who dislikes them, which makes them being insufferable an objective fact.”

Isaac took a deep breath before he began his explanation. That afternoon Braeden had called Isaac to vent her frustration on someone she knew would agree and understand. Apparently, it was not only Isaac that had issues with the new crews. While, to Isaac, Josh and Tracy had been a nuisance, once Theo left it seemed as if they had suddenly become entitled to treat the rest of the colony in the same way they had treated Isaac. To make things worse, they were evidently friends with Donovan and the rest of the crews of the new ships. Isaac might have said something snarky and unprompted about him not being the only one they were getting to, which Braeden did not appreciate.

The last straw had been an incident at lunch time, when the combined crews of the four cargo ships occupied an entire section of the canteen. They had been jeering and loud and rude, and Braeden had had to send in two constables to tell them to keep it quiet, to which they complied without any further comments, apparently.

“So I told her, ‘well, they were being their usual selves then?’.” Isaac explained as he grinned. “She did not like my tone. But I insist that it must be something about where they are from,” he thought aloud. “They’re all obviously related, because they have the same annoying snappy accent. Maybe they’re all the inbred spawn of a very small colony of mentally touched fugitives.”

“Anyways, apparently I’ve been wrong my entire _life_ ,” Isaac rolled his eyes as he grunted. “Because they are not Saturnians. Any of them. Hayden isn’t, the crews of the _Wendigo_ and the _Chimera_ aren’t, which means that Theo probably isn’t either. And then my- my-,” the Uranian struggled for a second. “My _dad_ apparently isn’t from Saturn either! Erica tells me they’re all from Charon! I don’t know if you’re any good at telling accents, but perhaps you could snoop around and keep an eye on Theo for me? Or ask him directly where he is from?”

Isaac paused for a second, trying to think what else to say, but he just concluded with a sigh. He knew that Brett would not go and do that. He would just give him an unimpressed look and ask him to let Theo be.

“I know that you don’t really believe me when I tell you that Theo is a nasty piece of work, because you see him being all cosy with Liam and canoodling with him, but… well, the thing is… There’s more to it. And I _know_ that you want me to give him a chance, but please listen. And please don’t tell anyone,” he begged, staring at the camera with his best pleading eyes.

“It’s not just because he, like, _touched_ me, and invaded my space… There’s something odd about him.”

Isaac paused for a second before giving his explanation about what he had seen happening between Theo and Hayden and what Malia had told him. He might be all charm and smiles, but he _definitely_ had a nasty side that Isaac did not like at all.

“I’m not being paranoid and even if you don’t believe me, you are Liam’s friend? Maybe you should be concerned about him?”

Isaac paused, looking at the beeping light of the camera. He really wished he could hear Brett’s reply now and not in two hours.

“Otherwise, everything is okay,” he sighed with contempt. “Long day, busy shift, nothing extraordinary other than what I’ve told you. Dunno…? Anyways, I’ll go do a few things now and wait to see what you have to say to this, and I’ll send you a message later tonight!”

Isaac gave a wink and a wave to the camera before telling the AI to stop recording. He collapsed in bed for a short instant as he took a deep breath and just thought about Brett.

After a shower, Isaac sat on his bed in his pyjamas, watching some mindless Martian soap with recurrent, unexpected plot twists and story arcs that went on for thirty episodes. Just as the main character was explaining how she had no intention to marry that fat Venusian merchant because she had discovered that he was his long-disappeared uncle, the AI beeped, and Brett’s message came through.

“Whoa!” was the first thing that his boyfriend’s holoprojection said. “That’s some crazy stuff going on there! I have to admit that I haven’t got the faintest clue about accents, and they could all be magma drillers from Mercury. Okay, I admit that what he said to Hayden is bad, but maybe Theo’s the jealous type?”

Isaac snorted. He knew enough about jealous types ( _yeah, fuck off, Gabe_ ).

“Of course, that’s no excuse for his behaviour, but I don’t think I should stir anything between him and Liam. We’re stuck inside a flying can for the foreseeable. And you know Liam, he can be… erm… He’s a bit… Well, _actually_ ; let’s just say he reminds me of this one blond Uranian I know,” Brett smirked, and Isaac rolled his eyes with a smile. “He’s the best Uranian in the Solar System, mind you, but don’t tell him, or else it’ll go to his head.”

“But I’ll keep an eye on them for you anyways,” Brett’s hologram said. “Anyways, there’s this other thing that…”

Brett went on talking about this one thing that Stiles had mentioned and went on an elaborate story that had Isaac in stitches. He really missed him, and he was just travelling further and further away.

**~ * ~**

The following afternoon, Isaac was in his workshop discussing with Greenberg about the best way to install an orbital heat collector. Isaac had finally received permission from Derek to buy and install a large _soletta_ (a large orbital mirror that would reflect the little sunlight they got back onto the station), which would help maximise their overall energy cycle. This was the kind of exciting new project Isaac wanted at that moment in his life: complex, useful, challenging, and likely to keep him busy until Brett could come back to him.

Greenberg and Isaac were so deep in their conversation and analysing their options that they did not hear the door slide open.

“Surprise!” two voices said in unison.

“Mason? Corey?” Isaac said when he turned around, with a smile a light-year wide. “What are you doing here?”

Mason and Corey rushed to give Isaac a hug.

“You needed us,” Mason said. “And you have to tell us all about Brett.”

“Mind if we take him away for a minute, Greenberg?” Corey asked.

“Oh, not at all. Be my guest. Getting him out of here is the only way to have a rest!” he chided in a light tone, and despite what other colonists said, Isaac knew Greenberg was a professional and that he could be trusted to do his job.

“But now, seriously, what are you doing here,” Isaac said as they walked into the canteen for a quick coffee. “I thought you were joking when you said you were coming.”

“I had leave regardless, and I have an appointment with Doc Deaton,” Corey explained, sitting opposite Isaac. “Mason here was the one who thought you were having a meltdown.”

“He _was_ having a meltdown,” Mason underlined, taking the seat next to his brother. “This was a family emergency and I had to come back.”

“I think you’re overreacting.”

Mason glared at Isaac, and with one look he managed to say two words: ‘fight’ and ‘nightmares’. Isaac did not press the issue; he just sighed and asked the AI for three coffees.

“So, now,” Corey laced his fingers and leant over when the coffees arrived. “This Brett guy. We need details and we need photos.”

“We don’t care whatever Erica says. _We_ are your family; _we_ get to veto.”

“Mason knows about it all already.”

“We don’t care.”

“Spill.”

Isaac rolled his eyes and gave up on all his attempts to divert the conversation. After all, his brother and his partner had squeezed work leave out of thin air and jumped on a hopper for a twenty-hour, one-way trip only to have this chat with him in person. So, Isaac caved in and explained everything again from the very beginning, when he boarded the _Melissa_ to fix some problems, to the day when Scott’s ship took off. Mason knew most of the story (which meant that, despite what he had said, Corey knew as well), but at least now they had the complete version first-hand. Or, at least, as complete as Isaac could do in the twenty minutes it took Greenberg to appear in the canteen, looking for him with an emergency with one of the water recyclers. With a rushed goodbye, Isaac promised to see them for dinner.

“You still haven’t explained everything,” Mason warned him before he left, and Isaac knew that there was a chat about Brett not being there that he was not going to be able to avoid.

That reminded him that he needed to tell his boyfriend, so he quickly typed a few lines in his buzzer as he walked.

_**ILAHEY:** Mason came over today_

_**ILAHEY:** A bit of a surprise, but he’s like that_

_**ILAHEY:** we’re having a sit-down meal this evening all together_

Whilst Greenberg explained quickly what had happened, Isaac’s head was busy thinking about his foster brother. Mason had warned him that he was going to come down to see him, but Isaac had never actually expected him to do it – especially because he did not want to talk about Brett’s absence. Mason had an important job in the observatory, after all, and it was not as if he could just drop it to see his big brother. According to Isaac’s understanding, this was not a family emergency because nobody was ill or hurt, but the Hewitts (and Mason in particular) had a very different interpretation of what family priorities were. In a comforting and painful way, they reminded him of his own mother and his old life on Oberon.

These were the thoughts that still filled his mind as Isaac put on a re-breather and sunk his naked arm into the greenish sludge of the station’s underbelly while reaching for the crank that would open the valve of the recycling circuit. There were still things that robots could not do.

After his shift, Isaac went straight to the de-contamination pod, and then headed directly to his cabin for a proper shower and a change of clothes. Then he checked his buzzer and saw that Brett had replied.

 ** _BTALBOT:_** _don’t you dare cut your dinner short because of me. You’ll see my message later regardless_

_**BTALBOT:** I’ll miss your reply tonight though, but I’ll see it in the morning xx_

_**BTALBOT:** Enjoy your family dinner_

Like every other time he received a message from his boyfriend, that put a smile on Isaac’s face. There was little he could say, so he just quickly typed a short reply.

**_ILAHEY:_ ** _OK, I will. Miss you too! xxx_

The reunion dinner was as heart-warming as it was unnerving, because Isaac was truly happy to have all his foster family together (and yes, Corey counted as one of the family), but he really did not want to talk about Brett. Isaac had reached a very delicate equilibrium where he had accepted that his boyfriend was gone for the time being, and that he had to keep himself as busy as he could so he would not end up overthinking, which would inevitably lead to moping around. There were some moments when he doubted himself, wondering if he had taken the right decision letting Brett into his life. Some others he groaned at himself for not jumping on the _Melissa_ with him.

After dinner Mason badgered Isaac to take him and Corey to the OB, which Isaac knew had nothing to do with observation and much more to do about talking and feelings and communicating his fears.

“You really like him, don’t you?” Mason asked once they were floating in the low gravity dome.

“Stop it, Mason,” Corey intervened. “You’ve seen him drooling already. Look at his sparkling eyes.”

“I do _not_ have sparkling eyes.”

“You do,” Corey insisted. “And a giddy smile.”

“Urghhh!” Isaac half-huffed half-laughed as he pushed Corey, and both floated away in opposite directions spinning gently.

“Okay, fine. But how are you dealing with him not being here?” Mason was determined to extract a confession, or at least an admission of concern.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Isaac said flatly. And then he felt water being sprayed on his face. “What in Oort? Mason!”

“Don’t give me lies. You’re in denial.”

“No, I’m not,” Isaac snorted, only to be sprayed again. “Stop it! Corey, do something!”

“I’ll do that every time you lie.”

“Where did you get a water pistol from?”

“Yeah, sorry. That’s my fault,” Corey admitted as he pushed himself down from the dome, closer to the other two. “I thought it’d be fun.”

“Isaac, you know I worry, and I know how it was with Scott. I can only imagine what’s really going on in your head. Which is why you need to tell us.”

“We know you don’t like talking about this stuff,” Corey agreed with his boyfriend.

“We know you. And we don’t want you to start bottling up.”

“And there I was thinking how nice of you to come and visit.”

“We came to see you because you woke me at half-past four after you got in a fight and then had a relapse nightmare,” Mason insisted. “But we don’t need an excuse to visit, do we?”

“No…”

“Just tell us that you’re going to be fine until he comes back. That’s all we want to know.”

“I’m…” Isaac bit his lip and then looked at Corey and Mason. It took him a second, but he knew that he had to tell them now before it all got too bad. “I’m worried that he won’t come back. I, erm… you remember what happened with Nolan right?” Corey and Mason nodded in agreement with twin glares of hatred and disgust. “I know this is different,” he snorted. “Brett is meant to be coming back. Well, his ship is… and I don’t know if I could go through that shit again?”

“Is that why you never told Scott about how you felt?” Corey asked, and this time it was him who got sprayed with water. “Hey! That’s for him?”

“Earth, _Corey_!”

“Heh, well… no, with Scott it was different,” Isaac, for a change, managed to speak about Scott, which had been the big taboo talk until then. “Scott was different. He was not like Gabe or like Nolan. He looked at me differently; he made me feel that I was special? Being around him you really feel that you could do anything. He’s that kind of person.”

“You’re special regardless.”

“You are to us.”

“I know,” Isaac rolled his eyes. “But it was different with Scott. I mean, whenever he smiled at me… He was too good, and I never thought I would be good enough for him?” Isaac remembered how he had thought that he was not worthy of a space captain, and that he was boring and uninteresting. Brett had shown him that none of that was true.

Mason slowly pushed himself until he was floating around Isaac and waited for a second before putting an arm around his shoulders.

“That’s his loss. He would have been lucky to have you. And now he’s trapped with that Martian tart while you have Brett,” Mason said

“She’s actually not that bad,” Isaac admitted.

“That wasn’t that difficult, was it?”

“Oh, _shut_ up,” he snorted.

“Isaac, from what you’ve told us Brett does not sound like the guy who would not come back for you. Definitely not like Nolan at all.”

“I think he really likes you, if he put up with all your Scott crap,” Corey said in plainer words. “He definitely is coming back. Personally, I wouldn’t have bothered…”

“Har, har,” Isaac mocked a laugh at Corey, but he knew he was right. “Mason, give me that water pistol.”

“It is going to be difficult, but you’re calling him every day, right?”

“It will be worth the wait. Just imagine what you’ll do when he lands back and you shove him into your cabin.”

“Corey, please, I don’t need to picture my brother doing that,” Mason pulled a face and Corey was quick to pull his boyfriend in for an apology kiss.

That seemed to put their worries at ease, so they let Isaac off the hook for the evening. While Mason and Corey talked about the list of things they needed to do while they were in the colony, Isaac floated up to the dome and looked at the Milky Way, remembering the date he and Brett had had and realising that, despite everything, he knew that Brett was coming back. It was a hunch, something certain and unshakable that he knew. He definitely was going to miss having him _there_ with him, but, on the other hand, there was a steamy and passionate meeting in his pod to look forward to.

**~ * ~**

A few days passed. Isaac had hoped that life on Beacon H would slowly return to its slow, Outer Rim, Kuiper routine, even if Mason and Corey were there. He definitely did his best to ensure that: breakfast in the canteen, daily briefing, on to the workshop and then he would hit the exercise rooms or check the hydroponics bay. Some days he would have Mason and Corey for dinner at his, and he still refused to show those two nosey asteroids the messages he got from Brett. On his day off, he arranged a big meal with the Hewitts, the Reyes, the Boyds, and the Hales, for which they had to close off a section of the canteen. In the evenings he would have his usual video exchange with Brett, who now was almost half-way to Neptune.

However, the presence of the tholin crews was still very noticeable, and they disrupted the usual lazy flow of time in Beacon H. Isaac did his best to stay clear from them. The blond engineer found that going to Deucalion’s and moaning to Braeden (who shared Isaac’s dislike) about them was very therapeutic. He also moaned to Boyd and Erica, who told him to stay away from them if he found them so irritating, but it was not always possible. He also moaned to Brett, who humoured him and had laughed when he imitated Donovan complaining about the appalling quality of the canteen food.

“As if he has eaten real beef,” Isaac had tutted.

“He does not deserve your amazing dishes or your amazing vegetables,” was the lagged reply.

Overall, everything was better with Brett, Isaac noticed. Even if he was just a holoprojection in his pod.

One morning, Isaac was slightly later than usual to the canteen. This meant that he saw Erica and Boyd walking out just as he got in, and this meant that he had to look for someone else to sit with for breakfast. He headed to the counter and got himself a peach and a bowl of porridge, and then walked around looking for a friendly face. And he found one, although not with the best company.

“Morning,” Isaac said curtly while standing up with his tray. “Mind if I join you?”

Hayden looked up and did not answer, but Josh and Tracy, who were sitting beside her, gave him a sharkish grin before picking up their trays and walking away to sit elsewhere.

“Were those two tholinheads bothering you?” he asked in a quiet tone. “They’re worse than Theo, that much I know.”

“Forget about them, Isaac,” Hayden sighed, but made no attempt to shoo Isaac away.

“How are you doing?” he continued asking as he peeled his fruit.

Hayden barked a sarcastic laugh. “Where shall I start?” she said as she pushed her fruit salad around the bowl.

“Well,” he mentioned cautiously, “has it got to do with those two? Because I can lock them in a lift to the core and leave them floating in low-G for a couple of days…”

Hayden chuckled genuinely this time. “Please don’t – the paperwork alone for that would be never-ending…”

“Has it got to do with Liam, perhaps?” he asked, more boldly, and Hayden sighed.

“I mean, I get it,” he continued as he chopped the peach. “He’s cute and he has nice eyes, and—ouch! You punched me?” Isaac rubbed his upper arm, where Hayden had, indeed, punched him.

“He’s a bit oblivious, but he really looked like a nice guy,” he continued

“Just because you’ve landed an unnecessarily tall Martian does not mean you are in a position to lecture me about choosing men.”

“Ah, well, but he’s not a Martian, because the Martian was Scott, and about Scott? _Well_ , there are many things I can tell you about my Jupiter-sized failure…”

Isaac really did not want to talk about Scott, but he could perfectly empathise with Hayden, and she did not deserve to feel like that – especially when it was all Theo’s fault, and the engineer loved any chance to badmouth him.

“Isaac, really, let it be…”

“Okay, listen,” he put down his knife and dumped his carefully diced peach into his porridge. “I shouldn’t really be the one talking, but everyone insists that talking helps. I mean, they say that because they are not the ones who have to talk. Actually, I see their point now,” he digressed, going off the tangent for a second. He shook his head and focused back. “The thing is. I can listen and nod empathically, and we can plan together how to lob Theo out into space.”

Hayden gave Isaac a long look. After a few seconds, Isaac shrugged his shoulders and turned back to his breakfast, but then Hayden spoke.

“You remember when Liam first arrived on the _Melissa_?”

“Not really,” Isaac said as he ate. “But he joined the crew a couple of years ago, right?”

“He came to the Admin Block to declare his weapons onboard the _Melissa_ ,” she explained. “He got all the paperwork wrong, and he had to go back and forth to the ship to get the correct datapads, and we lost an entire morning, because he kept getting his license number wrong because he had just got it and he didn’t…” she continued with a fond smile. “I lost my patience with him.”

“Oh, I think I remember _that_ ,” Isaac grinned as the memories came back. “Greenberg and I were downstairs at the time.”

“You know then. I yelled, like… like a lot. And he was so apologetic and confused… I immediately felt sorry for him because he was a security officer fresh out of the academy and I was expecting someone tougher? Someone different? But he was not at all like that.”

“Awww.”

“Yeah, well, whatever,” Hayden dismissed Isaac’s impertinence. “I had to work a lot with him during the first week they were here, and it just happened? Being around him and he… well…”

“He didn’t notice?” he asked, and she nodded silently, pushing her bowl to a side. “I think it’s something in the air. They got something wrong when they terraformed Mars. Too much ozone or something; because all Martian men are asteroids. Not the women, though.”

“If only it were so easy,” Hayden sulked.

Isaac had never expected that her non-affair with Liam could have affected her so badly. Isaac was a big softy with a lot of trust and abandonment issues, so it was normal for him to fall hard for someone and then not dare say a thing; but Hayden? The woman who almost singlehandedly controlled the lives of all the colonists on Beacon H _and_ had to deal with Derek’s bullshit in the office? Much of this was Liam’s fault, true, but the real culprit (and Isaac would not be convinced otherwise) was Theo.

“We’ll sort this out when they’re back,” he reassured her. “Knowing Theo, he’s bound to screw it up badly.”

Hayden shifted uncomfortably when Isaac said this, and he growled at himself for being his usual insensitive self.

“I’m not sure…”

“Did you know him already? Theo I mean. From before.”

“No?” she denied too quickly.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s just that you sound like him. You don’t that much anymore, but still. And you also sound like those two asteroids you were having your breakfast with. I always thought you all were from Saturn, but Erica told me I was wrong,” Isaac chuckled.

“I- I- erm… well, yeah. I mean, we are from the same colony,” Hayden said uncomfortably. “Charon. It’s a… well. It’s a very different colony and I was hoping never to see them again.”

“Okay,” Isaac said very slowly, and looking straight at Hayden, who was actively avoiding looking back at Isaac. “I know a couple of things about trying to leave the past behind, so that’s fine. But if those idiots are causing you any trouble we can go to Braeden and—”

“Isaac, really, there’s no need for that,” she cut him short. “They’re just old acquaintances. You don’t need to worry about them.”

“But they were being dicks to you?” Isaac sensed there was something else. “Just like Theo.” Hayden still did not answer. “They are seriously messed up, those crews. I swear to space, I can’t wait for them to get on their flashy new ships and bugger off.”

“You and me both…” she admitted, deflated.

“I have a bottle of honey hooch stashed,” he whispered with a smirk. “Come and find me when they’re gone and we can celebrate.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she replied with a half-hearted laugh. “Anyways, I better get going. And when you see your brother remind him that he needs to come and see me about that new comet of his?”

Isaac nodded as he finished his breakfast while the Administrator walked away. There were too many odd things about these crews from Charon. He was not sure why, but he would find out. He made a mental note to go and visit the Education Block. There was some research that he needed to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my mind (and for this AU) Erica is an avid reader of fanfic, which in the 2500s is considered classic period literature. Isaac also likes stories about weerewolves, but that's his guilty pleasure, I guess.
> 
> Oh, and I've been thinking that there are many things from Isaac's backstory that I never had time to explain here (like whatever happened with Gabe, or how Mason and Corey met, etc), and I was thinking about writing short stories that accompany this this main fic, but that are, like, optional reads?


	14. More than static

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The robotech was standing in front of his workbench, tapping nervously on the counter with a screwdriver. His control panel, which occupied all of his wall and that monitored all the robotic activity of the station, was beeping uncontrollably with orange and yellow warning lights.  
> “Boyd?” Isaac asked, snapping his friend from his concentration. When the robotics technician turned around, the engineer noticed that he was in his pyjamas.
> 
> OR: Isaac has to cope with Brett being nosey about Cam, with Josh and Tracy being pesky, and with a problem that has kept Boyd up all night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't thanked him in a while, but i_dont_want_to_tell_you_my_name is doing an amazing job improving and correcting this text!

“There is one thing that I have to tell you, and I know it is part of your childhood dream so I’m very sorry to tell you, but space travelling is _boring_ ,” Brett said as he pulled a face and groaned. “It takes forever! And you’d think I would be used to it by now, but this time the trip seems to be taking ages.”

Isaac chuckled to himself as his boyfriend went on and on about the latest news on the ship, which included Allison, Lydia, and Stiles pranking Scott. To be fair, his only experience in interplanetary travelling had been once on a cruise and then on a colony ship, which was like a cruise that simply did not return to its original spaceport, so he really did not know what it really was like. None of his stories about spacemen exploring the Solar System ever mentioned boredom, so Brett must be wrong. Anyway, Brett and the _Melissa_ were approaching Neptune, which was basically (from where Isaac was standing) by the Sun. They had been travelling for almost three weeks, and at 20 AUs away the lag between their communications was now over two and a half hours. Each way.

“Don’t get me wrong, babe, you get the most amazing views of the Oort cloud out there, but you just live too far away,” Brett concluded his rant with a grin, not really complaining. “And have you murdered all those Plutonian crews yet? You haven’t moaned about them in a while, so I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Are you still sure that they are plotting something?” he chuckled.

That was indeed something that was bothering Isaac. For the last few days, the Charonians had been behaving themselves, to Braeden’s great relief. But Isaac had also been too busy doing things with Mason while he still was on Beacon H, so he had not had much time to find trouble. While Isaac and Brett had only just started going out, Mason and Corey had been together for years. So if Isaac was feeling Brett’s absence, he could not begin to imagine what Mason was going through now that Corey was back on the observatory. Mason busied himself doing some research on that new comet in the Education Block’s databases, but this was one of the few occasions when Isaac could be the kind of supportive brother that Cam (and Mason) had always been to him.

“Theo has been his usual charming self. I’m sorry, Ise, but I haven’t noticed anything suspicious, and I’ve been sharing a ship with him for a while now…” Brett continued. There was a real chance that Theo liked Liam; Brett told him so, and he trusted Brett. But he could not let go of the unacceptable jealous confrontation he had had with Hayden and his cavalier attitude after Malia rejected his advances. Maybe that was the type of guy he was, but that was still going to blow up on Liam’s nose eventually, and the security officer did not deserve that. “If they are from the same colony maybe they have a past together, and that’s why they reacted like that?”

Isaac huffed at Brett’s suggestion. Whatever had happened between them, Theo had not been there to make amends with Hayden. He had acted cruelly and out of spite.

“Anyways, there’s this other thing I wanted to talk to you about but… but I know it’s a difficult topic for you, so I’m going to take advantage that you cannot interrupt and blare at me and I’m just going to say it. You can skip this part if you want, but—”

“STOP,” Isaac yelled at the AI, and Brett’s holographic face froze still in mid-air.

Isaac knew what was coming. Or at least he could guess. He knew what the course of the _Melissa_ was, and he knew where she was going to stop after they passed Neptune.

_Oberon_.

He had never been forward about his past before he boarded the _Talia._ He had told Brett about the accident during the Orbit celebrations, and he had told him about his days as a small kid. He even had mentioned his brother Cam. But he had never mentioned his teenage years.

For a few minutes he fidgeted with his fingers and messed with his hair, trying to think if he wanted to listen to Brett’s question or if he wanted to ignore it. Of course, he could always listen to it and then ignore it. But he _trusted_ Brett, and he wanted Brett to trust him back. How could he trust him if he evaded questions? And what if this had nothing to do with asking about his life? What if it was something else? Isaac considered whether he wanted to call Mason over.

Isaac pulled a pillow from the head of his bed and cradled it in his arms, crushing it in a hug for comfort and stress release. He took a deep breath and then asked the AI to keep playing.

“Babe, you and I know that we are stopping on Oberon, and we don’t have to talk about Oberon if you don’t want to. Whenever you want, and when you’re ready we can,” he said with his warmest smile and Isaac melted inside, because he could not believe his luck. “But I have a question about your brother.”

Isaac tensed at that, because he knew that Brett was not referring to Mason.

“You’ve mentioned him in passing, and I saw that picture of you three on your shelf in your cabin, and I was told that he joined the merchant navy?” All that was true. Isaac was not really surprised, because Brett was not stupid, and he knew this day would come eventually. “I… Is that why you asked me if I had met any Uranians on Ceres? Was he there?”

Cam was not there. Or he might. Isaac did not know anymore. The last he had heard was that he had got into a brawl and jumped on a ship. He was probably an outlaw now in the Inner Belt, or was living under a new name.

“I still lived on Ceres when you boarded the _Talia_ , but I was too young to work in the shipyards, so I don’t think I had a chance to meet him,” Brett explained and Isaac understood. “But perhaps I could help you find him, if you’re looking for him? I’m Ceresian through and through, you know? _Ceres born and Ceres bred; strong in the arm and thick in the head_ it’s said…” he smiled and then bit his lip. Isaac had never seen him having a difficulty with words, but he guessed it must be hard talking about something so sensitive without being able to judge how the other person is responding. Isaac felt again the warm fuzz in his chest. “I have contacts, and friends. I could—well, if you want me to, or if you have a picture I could ask around and—”

“Stop,” Isaac said in a quiet voice, but loud enough for the AI to pause the holovideo. He sighed as he carefully put the pillow on his bed and hid his face in his hands for what seemed an eternity as he thought. “Please, start recording reply in five.”

Isaac stood up and walked to his shelf. The AI beeped five times in so many seconds, and then it started holofilming.

“Hey, babe,” he said with a small voice. “I haven’t finished watching your message. I- erm… Well. My brother Cam,” he snorted bitterly.

“He… he’s my older brother. He’s five years older. He… well, he left Oberon when he was old enough to enlist in the merchant navy,” Isaac explained, guessing there was no point in keeping that part of the truth from his boyfriend. “I haven’t seen him since that day.”

“Derek told me that he met him on Ceres,” he continued after a pause. “Derek even offered him a place on the _Talia_ ,” he huffed in disbelief. “But he stayed there because he couldn’t become a spaceman without me…” He still could not understand why he would say that when he had made no attempt at contacting him and had never replied to any of the many messages that he had sent him over the years. Isaac rubbed his eyes.

“Apparently he got in a brawl in a bar and ran away. Nicked a ship and all… Derek always told me that he tried his best, but that he could never find him again.”

Isaac looked at the shelf where he had his family photos. He still had not looked at the camera. He held the framed photograph and studied it fondly for a few seconds. His mother, Cam and he were posing in front of one of the Io observation bays with Saturn and its rings partially illuminated but looming large in the background. He carefully clicked the back open and pulled out another printed still image from the back of the frame. Isaac preferred not to display that one because his father was in it, but also because it had been taken under the main entrance to the hub, decorated for the alignment. Uranus-blue letters glowed above them, _OBERON’S FIRST ORBIT_. It took him a couple of seconds, but eventually he put the photo on his bed and scanned it with his buzzer, sending it over to Brett.

“I’m sending you something now. That may not help much because it’s… well. It’s an old photograph, but it’s all I have.”

He turned around, his eyes red, and his lips turned into a thin line.

“Send,” he gave the command.

The engineer stood by his bed, looking at the picture. After a while the lights dimmed. With a heavy sigh, Isaac typed a quick message to Mason and headed to the canteen without waiting for a reply.

**~ * ~**

“Okay… tell me what is going on,” Mason said with a very worried face when he saw Isaac sitting on the far side of the canteen.

Isaac looked at Mason and passed him a bottle of hooch. “Thanks for coming.”

“Isaac you’re worrying me.”

“I just needed to stretch my legs and clear my head.”

“Why.”

“Because…” Isaac looked at Mason, who was getting anxious. “Well, because Brett is going to Oberon, and he asked me about Cam.”

Mason nodded silently. He knew of Isaac’s brother, and he was not his biggest fan. He had never had a brother until Isaac had turned up on the _Talia_ , but even so, he could not fathom the idea of abandoning him. Of course, he knew that Isaac thought differently and that he was still struggling with a big conflict fuelled on the one hand by having been abandoned, and on the other by the blind hope that his hero brother one day would come to find him. That was why he was very cautious about what he said next.

“What did he ask?”

“He was just curious,” Isaac shrugged his shoulders, as if his boyfriend worrying about him and asking about his brother had not been the thing that had touched him the most.

“And what did you tell him?” Mason knew that, despite what it seemed, and considering the subject, Isaac was actually being quite talkative, so he waited patiently as he drank.

“Not much really. I think I should have told him more.”

That was new, and Mason almost spit out his drink in surprise. Telling more about Cam had never been an option. Isaac surprised his foster brother even more by elaborating further.

“He said that because he is from Ceres he might help me find him…”

“Do you think he can?”

Isaac did not have to think too long to answer that. With a small smile, he looked at Mason and replied. “I trust him. I know he’ll try.”

“That’s great! And if he does not find anything, it does not matter,” Mason smiled back. “You still have us.”

“Always,” Isaac brought his bottle close to Mason’s and they clinked them.

The mood lightened after that. Isaac even felt inclined to tell Mason a couple of stories of him, Jackson and Cam. They bought a portion of Martian fritters and moved on to other things, including Mason’s comet, which did not appear in any of the charts. Apparently, Hayden was very interested about it as well, so he was working with the Administrator about its apparent composition, its trajectory, and the potential mining possibilities.

A while later, they were playing a game on their buzzer against each other when Isaac heard the unnerving and recognisable whistling of Josh. He was whistling that same tune that all those Charonians seemed to like so much – his father included. Mason noticed that his brother was not paying attention when Isaac’s avatar did not parry his attack, so he paused the game and looked up.

“Don’t bother with them, Isaac. It’s not worth it.”

Isaac nodded, but he still squinted at Tracy and Josh, who looked down their way and gave them a smirk and a wave. Mason reached out to put a calming hand on Isaac’s forearm, but the Uranian pulled it away.

“Seriously, Isaac. They will be gone in a few days.”

“Oh, will they now?” Isaac snorted.

“Yes, actually,” Mason looked down to his buzzer and turned the game off. “I heard someone saying that the last ship is coming in two days.”

“Two days?”

“Yes, Isaac,” Mason rolled his eyes. “You’ll get some peace and quiet after that. And we’ll all sleep better for that…”

“Excuse _me_ for having perfectly valid arguments to dislike asteroids who are proven to be nasty pricks.”

“They are… different, Isaac. Different from us? They just rub you the wrong way.”

“And _Braeden_.”

“Give me a break, please?” he begged with a smile. “They are loud and rude, but they stick together. It’s not as if they’re like Brunski.”

Isaac’s glare hardened when he heard that name. In the days when Beacon H was a large space construction site and Isaac was still working to qualify as an engineer, he was placed as an apprentice to one senior engineer called Brunski. One afternoon Brunski sent Isaac to find a tool from the shed, only to shut him in as a prank. The following morning Leonor Hewitt as Deputy Administrator and Derek as overall Commander shoved Brunski on the first trolley heading back towards Ultima Thule with explicit orders that he was to board on the first glider to Mercury, never to return.

“They’ve pushed me around enough.”

“That’s not the same. And I know you and you probably antagonised them first.”

“Oh, so that’s an excuse now?”

“Isaac…”

“Yeah, fine, whatever… That still leaves two entire days for them to do something bad.”

When Donovan and his crewmates arrived, Isaac decided that he had had enough, so he and Mason went back to their respective pods.

Back in his room, Isaac was way more relaxed than what he had been when he had left. He saw the picture he had on his bed, and carefully framed it again, keeping the snap from Io visible and hiding the one from the Orbit.

Once the picture was back on its shelf, Isaac jumped on his bed and sighed heavily, burying his head under the pillows.

**~ * ~**

The following morning, Isaac had a working breakfast with Greenberg in the canteen, although Isaac struggled a bit to follow because he was still half asleep after staying up late in the night to listen to Brett’s latest message and send him one back. When they were finished, they walked to the workshop going through the things that needed doing, and both were surprised to see Boyd already in the workshop.

The robotech was standing in front of his workbench, tapping nervously on the counter with a screwdriver. A mug full of coffee was steaming by his side, and it was definitely not the first one of the morning if the pile of fresh capsules in the bin was any indicator. His control panel, which occupied all of his wall and that monitored all the robotic activity of the station, was beeping uncontrollably with orange and yellow warning lights.

“Boyd?” Isaac asked, snapping his friend from his concentration. When the robotics technician turned around, the engineer noticed that he was in his pyjamas.

“Earth, Boyd, what’s going on?” Greenberg said, slightly panicking.

“What’s the emergency?” Isaac was quick to walk closer to Boyd to inspect the screen. “And since when have you been here?”

“Nothing too bad,” Boyd rubbed his tired eyes as he searched for his litre-mug of coffee. “At 4:25 standard my buzzer went off because one of the crawlers that was doing a routine check of the outer hull started beeping.” Crawlers were AI-controlled robots that ‘patrolled’ the surface of the station’s hull for faults. Isaac’s and Boyd’s favourite prank was to direct one of those to Erica’s window and wake her up yelling ‘space spider!’. “Then all other four crawlers on that area flared the orange warning. And then it happened to the cleaners, the agrobots, and even the ones I had in storage. Worse was when the shielders flashed orange too.”

Isaac and Greenberg turned to look at each other. The shielders were bots orbiting the colony that concentrated laser beams at any frozen item approaching the station that was big enough to cause damage. Some of them also carried explosive charges for bigger and rocky flying debris. Old timers told tales of space pirates, but the only defence they needed for Beacon H was against meteors. Also, and technically, an orange warning was only an indication that whichever robot had lost its connection to the central node, which Boyd supervised, but the disconnection of all robots in the colony was no laughing matter.

“Have you told Derek?” Isaac said, trying to remember the protocols for this eventuality. “Or Hayden?”

“There was no need,” Boyd clicked his tongue, but he kept staring at the screen. He took a long sip of his coffee. “The shielders, which are the ones furthest away, went back online after a second, and all other bots connected soon after.”

“What are all those orange warnings then?” Greenberg pointed at the panel.

Boyd put his coffee down and typed a few commands. The screen buzzed for a second and the two-dimensional display turned into a hologram that occupied the entirety of the workshop.

“There is still one bot flashing orange,” Boyd circled it with a pointer. “The rest are just marking the sequence in which they lost connection.”

“You’re telling me that there’s something on the station that emitted a—no, that _burst_ a signal that interfered with all our robots?” Isaac asked, trying to understand what was going on.

Boyd nodded as he typed a few other commands. “As we used to say in the Jupiter system, ‘you kicked into the storm’. And whatever caused the burst comes from this section here.”

“Oh, you must be _joking_ …” Greenberg said, eyes wide open, as he looked at the area Boyd highlighted on the hologram. He then slowly turned to look at Isaac, who had the smuggest grin on his face.

“Oh…” Isaac said crossing his arms on his chest, still radiating smugness. “Let me see if I got this right.”

“Isaac, there’s no need—” Boyd said, but Isaac interrupted him.

“Please, please, _allow_ me,” Isaac said, definitely enjoying this moment. “You’re telling me that one of the ships docked on the Oortside has some sort of contraband contraption that has emitted dangerous and illegal signals disabling the colony’s systems?”

“I’d tune down your gloating, Isaac,” Boyd had to chuckle. “It’s not a contraband machine or an illegal signal. I think it has to do with the tholin compressor Erica brought over.”

“Boyd, sometimes you’re too boring,” Isaac rolled his eyes as he walked over to his chair.

“You remember the tholin compressor that Erica said had interfered with the comms?”

“Yes.” Isaac remembered, but after that incident nothing extraordinary had happened, so nobody had gone up to check if anything was wrong with it.

“I think it’s still linked to the radio on the _Chimera_. I think they’re still on their old station’s frequency and that could disrupt our signals.”

“It can disrupt our signal to _all_ our robots?” Greenberg said in disbelief.

“It’s not unheard of,” Boyd tried to argue, although he knew it was not very convincing.

“Okay, whatever it is I think rules still are to notify Hayden,” Isaac insisted. “And anything else is up to you. This is your department.”

Boyd was silent for a few seconds and then sighed with resignation. “Isaac, could you please have a chat with Chief Petty Officer Stewart and have a look at their radio? Ideally without causing an incident…”

Isaac’s face changed to a lupine grin. “Don’t worry. I’ll deal with this.”

Not five minutes later, Isaac was outside the Oortside docks, waiting outside the bay where the _Chimera_ was stationed. He looked around, hoping to see Josh or Tracy, but after a couple of minutes he decided to give up on all pretence. He walked in, added his name to the log, and boarded the _Chimera_.

Sticking to the letter of the law, Isaac knew that as Engineer 1st Class in the Kuiper Corps of Engineers he could access any ship under his jurisdiction for maintenance and inspection, so he decided to ignore usual practice and just snooped in.

Leaving the crew aside, the _Chimera_ was still an amazing ship. The design was simple enough for a trolley, and using brand new materials always made everything look nicer, Isaac thought. When he got to the controls, Isaac saw that many indicators and displays had been simplified and condensed making the ship not only look neat but also elegant. It was probably also much more efficient. Shame all the efforts of the ship builders had been wasted on a tholin cargo ship.

Isaac connected an omnitool to his buzzer and programmed it to register radio waves which led him to the main control panel on the bridge. There he found the offending device. The radio was indeed transmitting some odd radio signals in an unusual frequency. The design was odd, because it was not the type of radio he was familiar with, but it did ring a faint bell, as if he had seen it somewhere but he just could not remember where. Seeing that he could not make it stop after tinkering with it for a while, he decided to extract the radio unit to try to fix it in back in the workshop. That would also give him the chance to mess with Josh and Tracy unnecessarily, which those days gave him an unexpected amount of guilty pleasure.

With a bit of tinkering of his omnitool and some good old elbow grease, Isaac extracted the radio (which was the size of his toolbox) with a muted hiss. He left a passive-aggressive, sarcastic message on a note telling them that he had requisitioned the radio because of the interference it was causing, and, with a smug, victorious grin, he walked out of the ship.

**~ * ~**

“Oh, is everything back to normal?” Isaac asked when he walked into the workshop and saw all of Boyd’s holographic display back to its usual and soothing blue green.

“Yeah, yeah. The moment you pulled that out, the last bot went back to green. I’ve told Hayden and she says she’s going to look into it.”

“Good.”

“That the radio?” Boyd pointed at the metallic box with a glistening white frontal display that Isaac was carrying under his arm.

“It is…” Isaac said as he put it on his workbench. “Could you give me a hand, please?”

“Sure,” Boyd nodded as he carefully put away the tools he had been working with. “What do you want?”

“You’re a well-travelled man,” Isaac said without taking his eyes off of the radio, while he carefully inspected it. “Have you seen this type of radio before? I definitely haven’t. But there’s something…”

“May I?” Boyd put his hand forward and Isaac gladly handed him the device.

“Please correct me if I’m wrong, but this looks like… like an updated version of the old Martian Parrish radios?”

“Oort… Sometimes I forget you’re a space exploration nerd,” Boyd said as he tried to unscrew the lid.

“But you see what I mean, right?” Isaac scoffed, his mind running at one hundred thoughts a second. “It seems as if they had decided in the shipyard that why use a Gagarin-45L or even a 73 Argent when they could update something that belongs in a museum?”

“Well… classics and vintage and stuff,” Boyd arched his eyebrows as he put the radio back on the counter after having a quick look inside. “I’ve never encountered this type of radio ever, so your guess is as good as mine.”

“Thanks, anyways.”

“No worries,” he said as he picked up his jacket from the hook.

“You’re going?”

“I need to walk out and check the crawler, just in case…”

With that, Boyd left Isaac on his own in the workshop. The engineer fished out one of his encyclopaedic catalogues of classic and period equipment from his semi-gel computer and asked the AI of the workshop to display the results as a holographic search. Eventually, he found the Martian Parrish radios and, while holding the device from the _Chimera_ in his hand, he flicked through the various designs and models. It was evident that it was not one of the latest examples (even Martian Parrish had ceased production some eighty years before), and the one that seemed most similar was a two-hundred-year-old Martian Parrish ‘Endeavour’, the classic piece of equipment that had been on the ships that had first colonised Neptune, Pluto, and the one favoured by Argent Industries in the days of the Human Federation.

Isaac could not stop smiling at that. Out there in a shipyard there was someone who had taken the time to make a new radio inspired by the models of the golden age. He wished he could meet them.

That particular curiosity itch satisfied, Isaac went on to look at the radio carefully on the inside before trying to sort out the frequency problem. Continuing on with what Boyd had started, Isaac removed all the casing, exposing the insides of the radio, but leaving the display panel connected.

The engineer knew more than the bare basics about radios, and there were many things that did not fit. All the electronics that he had expected were there, but they were far smaller than he had expected. After probing with his omnitool, he confirmed that the wiring and the fusing were made of very different alloys than the ones he normally associated with radios. There was more gold, vanadium and titanium than there was copper. There were many small glass tubes, some vacuum sealed, and some filled with gas. The electronic components looked very different in any case. Some looked also classically inspired, like the display. Some others looked completely different. They all were extremely _new_ and unfamiliar. Considering all this, Isaac had no trouble saying that those things were definitely more advanced than what he had expected. If he had to guess, he would say that they were more advanced than anything he had come across.

Not happy with what he had found, but unable to do much more for the time being, Isaac moved on to the main task, He put the case back on, screwed it shut, and, after instructing the AI to isolate the workshop, connected it to the station’s power.

“ _Engineering Workshop 1 now radio isolated._ ”

“Okay… let’s see what you’re transmitting…” Isaac stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth as he pressed the correct buttons that appeared on the screen.

After a brief instant, the screen glowed blue and then it continued to transmit whatever it had been sending out before. Isaac’s omnitool confirmed that the radio was emitting, but without an antenna (and inside the isolated workshop), the message was going nowhere. Isaac changed the settings of his omnitool until it found the frequency, but the noise that came out was a loud and incoherent electronic screech that forced him to cover his ears. He panicked for a second until he found the volume control.

_That was unexpected_.

Isaac then tried to get his omnitool to analyse the signal. He first tried to run it through his computer, but nothing happened. Frustrated, Isaac tapped on the screen until he stopped the transmission. Whatever was being transmitted by that radio was encrypted. This meant that it was secret. In turn, this meant that it was nothing good, and that Tracy, Josh and the rest were full of tholins. Isaac again pulled a smug grin.

“ _Mr Greenberg is requesting access into the workshop_ ,” the AI chimed.

“Cancel isolation, and let him in, will you?” Isaac said aloud, and the AI did as it was told.

“What have you been doing in here?” Greenberg said as he walked in. “Radio isolation? Did you find what was wrong with those ships?”

“Oh, well, well, well…” Isaac kept on grinning. “Have I now?”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Come closer, Greenberg and tell me: have you ever seen such a radio?” he spun on his chair, so that Greenberg could have a better look.

“Oh, wow, no. Well, I don’t think I have?”

“Well, _indeed_ , Greenberg. Me neither. But let me show you what this thing is doing in any case.”

With a cocky tone, Isaac asked the AI to isolate the room again, only so he could scare Greenberg with the radio’s screech.

“What in Oort is that?” the mechanic said, looking at the radio with a very different face. “Does Hayden know?”

“She does. But this goes beyond Hayden. This is a matter for Braeden.”

“Yeah… I can see that.”

“I _knew_ it!” Isaac said, incapable of holding it any longer. “I knew there was something wrong with those Charonians. And I—”

“They’re not from Charon,” Greenberg deadpanned, interrupting Isaac’s self-congratulatory speech.

“They’re not what, sorry?” Isaac lost the trail of his thoughts, and just looked at Greenberg with a blank expression.

“They are not from Charon. Where did you get that silly idea from?” he chuckled.

“Don’t they…? I mean. Don’t they speak like they are from Charon?” Isaac was lost.

“No? _I’m_ from Charon,” Greenberg explained, because Isaac did not know. Greenberg was the source of many mysteries. “Why would you say they were from Charon?”

“Because _they_ say they are from Charon. All of them with their weird accent,” Isaac’s brow furrowed. This was getting out of hand. “Tracy, Josh, Donovan, Hayden. _Theo_.” ( _Dad_ …?)

“Well, I know what Koops think about Plutonians and the inner Kuiper Belt, so I don’t go around announcing it, but I am a Charonian. And we don’t speak like them at all.”

That baffled Isaac.

“Where are they from then?”

“I always assumed they were from Canaan?” Greenberg offered. “That’s where the ship file said they came from first. There are lots of weird colonies out in the KB, after all…”

Isaac bit his lip and reclined back against his chair. There were way too many things off with the crews of these ships. They were transmitting coded information; they lied left, right and centre about where they were from; they were somehow connected to both Theo and his father. All the red flags he had been seeing for the last weeks bound together into something so red and so flag-like that he could not avoid it any longer.

There was of course the issue of Hayden. She was somehow involved with all these people, but she was also reluctant. Isaac did not know what to do about her, because Hayden, imposing and scary as she was, was his friend. Or, at least, that was what he still thought.

This was definitely something to tell Braeden. And Derek. The question now was what was Theo doing on the _Melissa_ and what did that mean for Brett.

“Greenberg.”

“Yes, boss?”

“This is what we are going to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE PLOT THICKENS!!!!


	15. Confirmed suspicions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But whatever they are planning they haven’t acted on it yet. I suspect this has to do with the next tholin trolley coming in. I guess they’re waiting. We have one advantage, though: they don’t have the element of surprise anymore.”
> 
> OR: Isaac gathers his friends and explains to all the danger their colony is in

Isaac rushed back to his room with the confiscated radio under his arm. His home AI told him that he had an unseen holomessage from Brett which he probably had sent when he woke up, but Isaac was too worried with what was happening right now to see it. Instead, he hid the radio under his bed, commanded the AI to initiate the safety breach protocols that he had never ever expected to have to use, and typed a quick message to his boyfriend.

**_ILAHEY:_ ** _Hey, babe, I’ve just seen you’ve sent me a holo but have no time to watch it right now. Something big is happening in the colony. I was right all along. These crews are full of shit and they’re up to something. Be careful around Theo. I’ll tell you everything later. xxx_

If they were still around Neptune, the message would take just under three hours to reach him. Any reply he could get would not reach him in less than six. He cursed the vast distances of space but hoped that Brett would not be mad at him.

He activated the security lock and left his pod, heading back towards the Communal Block, where Greenberg and Braeden would be waiting for him, hopefully with Derek, Boyd, and Erica.

By the time he reached the Avenue, he got a message from Braeden demanding an explanation, because Greenberg had been unhelpfully cryptic. Isaac chuckled to himself, and was about to text a reply when he noticed something. Just outside the door to his workshop he saw Josh, Tracy, and Hayden having what seemed to be an angry discussion in hushed tones.

Back in his Oberon days, Isaac had mastered the skill of passing unnoticed out of pure need for survival, but right now he stood up from the crowd, and not only because of his height. He quickly took off his blue and gold service scarf and shoved it under his shirt, behind his back. It was not that he felt naked or vulnerable without it, but he had grown used to wearing his marker of rank around and it was what people recognised him for. Hopefully without it he would blend better into the busy crowd of the Avenue.

As he focused on the conversation outside his workshop, Isaac cursed because he could not hear what they were going on about, but it was easy to guess that it was about the radio on their ship. They were probably complaining that it had been removed without their permission, or something on those lines. Hayden looked flustered and uncomfortable with their discussion. Was she defending him? She did not know anything about what he had done – she only knew whatever Boyd had reported. There was also a chance that she was in with them and this was all a façade, but Isaac dismissed that immediately. Those two tholinhead asteroids were bullying her because of something _he_ had done, and he was not going to let them do it—until she turned around, sighed, and opened the door to _his_ workshop.

According to regulations, Hayden had the right to enter into the workshop, but it still felt wrong, especially because of the way she hesitated for a second only to be nudged by Tracy. The three of them looked over their shoulders (Isaac managed to blend in the crowd unseen) before entering the room.

Whatever was going on, Hayden was in _deep_. Either willingly or not, but she was. This meant that he had to reconsider his options. Isaac slowly walked back into the ring, and from there he let himself into one of the maintenance corridors, where it was unlikely that Hayden or the other two would come looking for him.

He needed Braeden to see the radio, and it was only blind luck that he had hidden it in his room. But he could not go to the Security Block now, or the Admin one, because Tracy or Josh might see them. He also needed to avoid any chance encounters with Hayden. The best thing was to have their clandestine meeting in his cabin. The OBs and the hydroponics bays were good options too, but Hayden had enough access rights to find them there if so she wanted.

With a sigh, he adjusted the settings of his buzzer and made a call.

“Isaac! Where are you and what in Oort is going on?” Braeden yelled.

“I’m in service corridor A45,” he said in a hushed tone. “What has Greenberg told you?”

“Not enough.”

The Uranian could tell that Braeden was angry, and rightfully so. He pinched the bridge of his nose and explained the bare facts as he knew them before making a suggestion.

**~ * ~**

One by one, the people Isaac trusted the most walked into his pod. Isaac had had to update the security protocols for his pod, but now he was taking no chances. As per instructed, they had come from different ways, which Erica had moaned about being completely unnecessary, but for once Braeden had actually agreed with him. She and Derek had come the long way around the ring, from Security, through B, and then A. Erica was in A already, so she just popped in. Greenberg had come straight from the Avenue. Boyd had gone down to the core and then up again to A.

“Okay, now that we’re all here, can you explain what all this is about?” Derek said from the far corner, his arms crossed on his chest.

Isaac’s cabin was big enough for him, but having six people in it was a stretch. Braeden and Erica were sitting on his bed, and Boyd had managed to secure his chair, but Greenberg had to recline against his shelves.

“Okay, Boyd knows part of it, Greenberg knows another part, and I guess you all know a bit?”

“Yes, we do,” Erica rolled her eyes. “Just get on with all this.”

Unsurprisingly, it was Braeden who sided with Isaac. “This is not a laughing matter. If what Isaac says is correct—”

“We’ll never hear the end of it,” Greenberg muttered under his breath, but Derek fulminated him with a look.

“—then this means that the station is under very serious threat.”

“Is this about space pirates? Lost colonists?” Erica kept on the war path. “Because those are tales of the old timers to entertain children.”

“The Outer Rim is vast. Much bigger in extent than any other system,” Derek explained. “It’s simple mathematics. And we may not have massive planets with strong gravity or moons, but we have uncountable planetoids and asteroids. Sixty percent of this section of the Kuiper Belt is still uncharted. And we are an unincorporated territory, which means that anyone wanting to carve a kingdom has a chance here.”

“Before we jump to conclusions, shouldn’t we listen to Isaac?” Boyd offered. Everyone agreed quietly.

“Okay, I’ll explain everything, but first,” Isaac knelt down on the floor and pulled something big from under his bed, “I need you to see this.”

Isaac brought the radio out, ignoring Erica’s comments about obvious hiding places, and put it on the floor where everyone could see it. He had expected a surprised gasp, but his friends seemed quite unimpressed.

“So this radio has been taken from the _Chimera_ ,” Isaac explained. “This is the radio that interfered with all the colony’s robots earlier this morning.” He paused for a second to underline the importance of that fact. “It is likely that this is linked to the tholin compressor that Erica ordered. The one that also disrupted all our comms a few days ago.”

Derek looked at Erica, but she simply crossed her arms and frowned.

“This radio, as Greenberg and Boyd can confirm, is a completely new model. And not only that, it is also completely unrelated to recent radios. There is a difference between new stuff inspired by classic pieces like the Martian Parrish stuff and this,” Isaac pointed. “I should also add that it is not only new; it is newer than anything I’ve seen. Like, it has components which I very much doubt even exist on Earth.”

Greenberg and Boyd followed that bit of the explanation with ease, but Derek and Erica looked at him and seemed quite lost.

“Why is a brand-new, and yet malfunctioning radio, a matter of colony safety and utmost secrecy?” Derek asked with concern.

“I don’t think it is malfunctioning,” Isaac admitted. “There’s more. Listen.”

He knelt down and connected the radio to his omnitool and to his semi-gel computer. He typed a few commands, isolated his pod, and then turned the radio on, so that it screeched its loud synthetic noise.

“That is all the reading I can get from whatever it is transmitting,” Isaac pointed at the radio, looking directly at Derek. “That is encrypted as Oort. And I’m talking military-grade encryption like we haven’t got on Beacon H.”

Isaac paused to let that sink.

“So we have this new radio and we have four new ships the likes of which nobody had seen before. Ships that other than radios like this are also clad with high-density Galatean polymer,” the engineer explained. Everyone remembered when he had taken over a canteen table, covering it with different types of space-proof polymer. “That is museum stuff. We can’t make that anymore.”

“This is the thing you wanted to buy from Neptune?” Derek remembered.

“Yes. And that brings us to the key problem.”

“How?”

“The crews of these ships,” he said flatly. “They say they’re from Charon, but they’re not.”

“I didn’t say they weren’t,” Greenberg intervened when Isaac looked at him for an explanation. “You all thought that they were from Charon because of the way they speak, but _I’m_ from Charon, and we don’t speak like them.”

“Hayden is the one who said she was from Charon,” Boyd pointed out one of the main issues they were facing. “If Isaac is correct, and I see no reason to doubt him, Hayden knows the crews of the _Chimera_ and the _Wendigo_. They are all from the same place—“

“But they’re not from where they say they are,” Derek concluded, seeing where the discussion was going. “Where are they from?”

“Canaan?”

“Their ships’ paperwork points towards Canaan,” Braeden confirmed. “But Canaan went radio silent years ago. Meteor strike, structural failure, Oort storm… nobody knows.”

The cabin went silent as they tried to digest all these revelations.

“What’s the point?” Erica asked. “Don’t get me wrong, this is all very suspicious, but why would Beacon H be targeted by industrial saboteurs?”

“Our mining stations?” Greenberg suggested. “We are the outmost settlement of the Solar System. The only thing we have are tholin mines.”

“We have the longest reaching comms station this side of Neptune – and we relay half of the signals of the Outer Rim,” Braeden added. “Because of our position on the ecliptic, we’re also the best-connected colony of the Kuiper Belt. There are a few surprising strategic features to our position.”

“So it _is_ space pirates?” Erica insisted. “Rogue settlers hidden in the Outer Rim trying to carve up their own territory?”

“There is a reason why all the colonies of the Kuiper Belt are part of the Rangers,” Derek reminded everyone. “There are many places to hide and stay hidden out here. This is not Saturn. We may be a colony but we have a strategic value. But we’re all enlisted rangers, so should the need arise we can defend our position.”

Everyone went quiet at that, because it was new to them.

“Are we talking battleships?” Greenberg asked what Isaac had not dared.

Battleships were part of the mythos of the early Space Age and, as such, Isaac had always been a big fan. But such ships never came to be. Life was too precious in space, and spaceships and colonies were too expensive and too easy to blow up. The sole purpose of internal and inter-planetary conflict had always been to take control over colonies and stations. Because all out, open warfare was only liable to damage these places beyond repair, economic blockades and tactical infiltrations had become the norm.

“ _No_. I’m talking armoury supplies and orbital defences.”

Everyone turned to look at Braeden for confirmation. Beacon H _technically_ had an armoury. Isaac knew because he had helped building it, but he was not sure of what was inside. If it was anything like the Ranger training he had gone through so many years before there would be a combination of rubber bullets, stun guns, pulsers, and assorted bits of exoarmour.

“We’re not there yet,” she said, and this was received with a collective nervous sigh. “But whatever they are planning they haven’t acted on it yet. I suspect this has to do with the next tholin trolley coming in. I guess they’re waiting. We have one advantage, though: they don’t have the element of surprise anymore.”

“They know that Isaac took their radio,” Boyd pointed out. “Josh and Tracy know it, and Hayden knows it.”

“Hayden broke into the workshop just before we met,” Isaac reminded them.

“Are we suggesting that Hayden is working with these industrial saboteurs of unknown origin?” Erica threw the question out.

“Hayden knows them, and they know her. She definitely had a previous history with Theo,” Isaac explained. “Whatever is going on between them, she is not very happy with them being here, and I would not be surprised if they’re coercing her. Or blackmailing her. Or something.” Hayden had mentioned that she had run away from her home colony – but she had also said that she was from Charon, and had stuck to that lie for eight years.

“You need to return that radio,” Derek decided. “We’re not ready and we don’t know how ready they are. We need them to believe they still have the upper hand.”

“So this is it?” Isaac was not happy. “I return their radio, the same radio that can disable our bots and comms, and we _wait_ for them?”

“We don’t just wait for them. We prepare for them,” Derek concluded, looking at the radio on the floor. Braeden placed a caring hand on her husband’s shoulder.

“What about Hayden?” Boyd asked in general, but it was Braeden who answered.

“Erica and I will have a word with her.”

**~ * ~**

“ _YOU!_ ” a voice shouted behind Isaac as he walked away from the docks. Judging by the tone, he knew it was probably Josh. Isaac clicked his tongue and pulled his most unnerving smirk.

“Oh, hello, Shipman Díaz. How are you today?”

“Cut the crap, Uranal—”

“Whoa, whoa, language, Josh!” Isaac kept smirking. “We know what happened last time you effed and jeffed like that. And this time your captain is not around to take the punch for you.”

Josh was fuming. His nostrils flared and his fist shook by his side.

“You stay away from our ship,” he said in an icy tone. “And give us back our radio!”

“Oh, that old thing?” Isaac said with a fake smile. “I put it back.”

“You did what? What in hell did you do? Who do you think you are?” Josh said as he pushed him, but Isaac just kept grinning, and putting his hands up, seeing that there was a crowd of colonists forming around them.

“Listen to me: your radio? That old thing was causing an awful noise so I had to fix it,” Isaac said, now stepping closer, but keeping his grin. “And I’m the chief engineer here,” he pointed at his scarf. “I can get on any ship I want to in _my_ station if I think it’s necessary.”

Josh was breathing heavily, clearly thinking about the situation.

“What did you do to my radio?” The way Josh said that sounded more like a threat than a question. “And where did you take it?”

Isaac took a second before answering, loud enough for everyone to hear and with all the nonchalance he could muster. “Well, I had to take it to the auxiliary room to fix the awful, awful noise it was making. I think it was interfering with the tholin compressor or something, so that’s the next thing I need to fix.” Just as he said that, Isaac noticed a flicker of panic in Josh’s eyes. _So that’s also a trick of yours, huh?_ He thought to himself. “Anyways, I whacked it a couple of times and now it runs as smooth as anything.”

That was as much of a truth as Isaac could say, which was better than an outright lie. It must have worked, because Josh stepped back, walking away into his ship before one of Braeden’s deputies came to break the fight.

“Bye, then.” Isaac waved once the shipman had disappeared through the airlock.

The engineer did not know what would happen next. He did not know if the saboteurs were space pirates or what. But he was sure that they would find out soon enough. In less than thirty hours the last ship from Canaan would arrive, and all Oort would break loose.

**~ * ~**

Isaac went back to his cabin. They had all missed lunch, and now he was starving, but he did not want to go to the canteen. He was too hyped with what was going on to sit where the saboteurs could see him. He opened whatever rations he kept in his kitchen and played Brett’s message.

“Morning, Ise!” his boyfriend’s holoprojection inundated the room, and Isaac relaxed a peg. But from what Isaac could see, he was not in his cabin – he was floating in a low-G room. “So, it’s day two since we left Neptune, and just in case you were wondering, it’s still as blue as always. Have a look!”

Brett then took the camera and turned it so it was looking out what was clearly an aft porthole. Outside, Isaac could see a large, bright blue marble with ice-white clouds. He had to smile – he had always liked watching Neptune through his telescope back on Oberon.

“I thought you of all people would enjoy the view,” Brett’s voice came through. “We didn’t have a chance to stop, because Lydia is in a bit of a hurry for us to deliver the tholins. Anyways,” and Brett then turned the camera so it was focused on him as he floated around.

The mechanic went on for a while telling what a disaster dinner had been the night before and how Stiles had convinced him, Allison and Scott to start a nightly game of _Explorers of Alpha Centauri_ , which was a game they had on Mars.

“Stiles spent a long time explaining to me how it all worked. It’s all set in the old days of exploration, and he’s setting us missions and challenges and such. I’m sure you’d _love_ it,” he concluded. “Oh, and I received the picture you sent me, of you and your family… You looked so happy there, Ise.”

He looked happy because he had been, back then. A kid of eleven, overexcited about the astronomical event of the century, with a family and friends. Isaac instinctively looked at his shelf, where he knew the picture was hidden in the back of a frame. Isaac also noticed how Brett had not mentioned anything about his mother or about his father.

“I think that with that picture of your brother and knowing you we might be able to draft an avatar of how he might look now – if you’re still happy with this? I won’t send anything to Satomi until you give me the thumbs up.”

“So that’s it, I think. I better get going, because Malia needed me to help her scrap the burnt remains of dinner off the ceiling. I can’t wait to see your message, babe! Bye-bye!” he concluded and blew him a kiss.

Despite everything that was going on, Isaac found himself smiling. Even at twenty-something AUs away, his boyfriend had that effect on him.

He let out a heavy sigh before focusing back on the big issue of the day.

“Hey, handsome,” Isaac began to record a message for Brett. According to his calculations, his boyfriend must have just only seen the text message he had sent him earlier in the day, so he would not get a reply for a couple of hours. “I… well... this is difficult…” Isaac bit his lip and scratched his elbow. “Where should I start. Well, first of all, I hope that the message I sent you earlier did not scare you too much. Now, about the crews of these ships, we think they are trying to sabotage Beacon H.”

Isaac summarised the discoveries they had made and the conclusions they had reached. He also mentioned how Josh had reacted and his concerns about Hayden.

“So, my bottom line is that I don’t know if Theo is involved with these saboteurs, but I would not be surprised. But he’s on the _Melissa_ with all of you, not here, which means that he either wanted to wash his hands of all of the business here, or else he has something else planned. You know me well, and you know how much saying this is going to hurt me, _but_ : I. Told. You. So. I might not have said that he is the leader of a gang of saboteurs or a space pirate, but I knew he was full of shit of some description.”

The Uranian chuckled for a second, but he soon shook his head, looking into the camera with pleading eyes.

“I know that we don’t really have anything on him, but please stay alert. I don’t think you need to tell Scott yet, but keep this in mind. We’re going to have another meeting later, trying to decide what’s going on with Hayden, and I’ll keep you updated. I’ll message you later. Don’t get too angry!”

Isaac told the AI to send the message, and then sat deflated on his chair. He had not thought too much about Theo, because he was not there on Beacon H. But he was worried for Brett. And for Liam, and Scott and all the crew of the _Melissa_.

Hopefully their next meeting would clarify things.

**~ * ~**

Half-way through the afternoon, Isaac got Brett’s reply to his first text message, asking him to elaborate more and to be careful. Isaac knew that his boyfriend would have seen his holomessage by now, so he hoped that was all the reassurance he needed.

When his shift finished, and as instructed, Isaac left the workshop and headed towards the Security Block, where Braeden had scheduled a meeting. She had actually scheduled two – a secret one first, and a fake one later, to which Hayden had been invited. Once in the building, he went through two security gates and eventually reached one of the rooms, which looked like a normal meeting room, but he was sure it was more than that. Erica and Boyd where there already, and so was Braeden.

“Where are Derek and Greenberg?”

“Don’t you start being impatient, Isaac,” Braeden snapped.

“Oh, sorry – I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Just sit down,” Boyd took pity on his friend and signalled him over.

“What else has happened?”

“We have all reasons to believe that they are monitoring our communications,” Braeden said, tapping her fingers nervously on the table. “And it’s not as if we can call Ultima Thule or Papete for help if the _Garuda_ is bound to arrive tomorrow.”

“You don’t trust us to control this situation?” Isaac asked.

“It’ll all depend on the result of this meeting,” Braeden said flatly, in a tone that admitted no reproach.

They waited in silence for a couple more minutes until Derek walked in, followed by Greenberg and Alan Deaton.

“Dr Deaton?”

“Everybody, sit down,” Derek commanded. “Doctor Deaton is here at my request. And before any of you ask, he was not always a medic officer.”

“I have always been a doctor of medicine,” Deaton clarified. “But it is true that that was not _always_ my only job. For many years I was involved in the trading of confidential information. Sometimes the owners of said information would be… unaware of the nature of these transactions.”

“You were a _spy_?” Isaac looked at Deaton with different eyes.

“Whom did you spy for?” Erica leant forward. This was juicy information. “Was it the Governor of Jupiter? Is that why you were so good friends with us before we emigrated?”

“Believe me, Ms Reyes, that my friendship with your mother was honest and coincidental,” Deaton laughed. “We were neighbours. Friendly neighbours. Which is why I decided to follow you to the Kuiper Belt. No, I was involved in industrial secrets.”

“ _Industrial?_ ”

“Yes,” Deaton confirmed. “For Argent Industries.”

“Wait,” Isaac interrupted before anyone else could speak. “ _Argent Industries?_ Their radio is based on a Martian Parrish model favoured by Argent Industries!”

“Yes, Isaac,” Derek said impatiently. “I think we all got there. That’s why Dr Deaton is here.”

“How did you know he used to be a spy?” Erica wanted to know.

“I reviewed all the colonist applications,” the commander said matter-of-factly. “Especially those who have a past that might be an asset or a liability,” he added, turning to look at Isaac with a side-smile.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Isaac was ready to stand up from his chair, but Boyd held him down.

“He means nothing,” Braeden stepped in, fulminating her husband with a look. “This is a situation we had hoped never to encounter, that’s all.”

“Mr Lahey,” Dr Deaton spoke again, trying to focus their discussion. “If you could share the recording of the transmission, perhaps I could help?”

Isaac glared at Derek as he pulled his computer and rolled it out on the table.

“Is this room secure?” he asked as he navigated through his files.

“This is one of the most secure rooms in the station,” Braeden confirmed.

Isaac nodded. He fiddled with his computer until a couple of images he had taken of the radio were holoprojected in the middle of the meeting table. Then, pre-emptively putting a hand to his ear, played the electronic encrypted screech that the radio had emitted.

“Yes,” Deaton pulled a face as Derek signalled Isaac to stop the recording. “That’s encrypted for sure.”

“Is this the kind of encryption that you expect from Argent Industries?” Braeden seemingly already had an idea in mind. “And did Argent Industries have anything to do with the colonisation of Canaan?”

“I didn’t even know Argent Industries was into colonisation anymore,” Boyd commented.

“It wasn’t, in fact,” Deaton answered Boyd first. “All of Argent’s colonising credibility collapsed after the Alpha Centauri expedition two centuries ago. The Federation pulled all contracts and the astronaval branch imploded. They refocused their brand to comms.”

“So they are not building ships, but they are fitting them with state-of-the-art radio equipment of a brand that disappeared decades ago?” Isaac queried.

“That’s not the only option.”

“And that radio you showed us is not a Martian Parrish model,” Deaton said, his brow knotted. “It’s definitely similar, but it is not a Martian Parrish. It hasn’t got the patent mark at the base,” he added rotating the hologram.

“But is it an Argent encrypted code?” Derek insisted.

“I have not been involved in this business for a very long while, Commander Hale, and it is perfectly possible that they have in the recent years developed something similar. But I’d need some time to process it.”

“We haven’t got time, Doc,” Braeden said. “We just need to know if Argent Industries is responsible for this.”

There was a tense pause. Deaton looked carefully at the people gathered around him, who were waiting with bated breath for his verdict. The medic took a deep breath.

“No, I do not think that is likely.”

This was received with a mix of frustrated groans and heavy sighs.

“Argent has never been involved in mining,” Deaton continued. “Their big aim was research into improved long-distance communications.”

“So they’re just working on the relays?” Braeden kept on asking.

“Not just the planetary relays – they were pushing big for all sorts of technical and theoretical development that might help shorten the communication lag.”

“Faster-than-light communication?” Isaac understood only the basics about stellar comms, but he knew that the relays _somehow_ warped signals around space-time.

“And faster-than-light travelling,” Deaton added.

“We know that does not work,” Greenberg was quick to point out. “They’re the ones who proved it with that Alpha Centauri catastrophe.”

Deaton held his breath for a second before looking around the room, Isaac could see the wheels turning behind his eyes, assessing them and their current predicament.

“Last thing I heard was that they were re-examining that avenue of research.”

“Okay, that’s all very well and fine,” Derek said. “But we haven’t got much time, and this is clearly not the point that concerns us right now. If Argent Industries is not involved, it just seems as if these saboteurs have been simply using Argent tech. Do you know what other corporations or systems have been stealing designs from Argent that may be interested in tholins or the Outer Rim?”

Deaton failed to answer that. “I don’t know.”

“Okay, right now that can wait. We need to focus on deciphering the message if we can and plan ahead for tomorrow,” Braeden concluded.

“Wait – there’s one more thing, though,” Isaac reminded everyone. “What about Hayden?”

**~ * ~**

Isaac did not like the plan. He had said so loud and clear. Hayden’s involvement in all the malarkey that they were immersed in was unclear, but he did not think she was directly responsible. There had to be something else. But Derek and Braeden could not waste more time, so they had resolved that a direct course of action was best. Even if that involved intimidating someone they had once thought of as their friend.

At the appointed time, and not a second later, Hayden opened the door and walked into the room. She was busy looking into her buzzer, and was carrying a pile of datapads under her arm – she had obviously just finished her shift in Admin.

“Okay, can anyone please explain to me why we are having this meeting _here_ and at this obscene hour?” she said with a tired voice. Only when she was met with silence did she look up. “What’s going on?” she asked, fear thinly lacing her voice.

Braeden typed a few commands and the door slid shut behind Hayden, locking them in.

“Hayden, please sit down,” Derek instructed. “We need to talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this one was shorter than usual, but it's at least packed with answers (and more unsettling questions!)


	16. The upper hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t think it would make sense for her to spill at this moment otherwise,” he said through his teeth, low enough so only her could hear him. Hayden had insisted that none of the crews seemed suspicious, but it cost nothing to be extra cautious just before the operation.  
> “This can only go one of two ways,” she clicked her tongue and turned around to look back at the airlock and the still unoccupied dock.
> 
> OR: Hayden reveals what she had been hiding, and explains in how much danger BEacon H reallly is

The door closed and Hayden sat. Isaac, from a corner of the room saw how the administrator’s face changed from surprise to fear when she realised not only that all the steering committee of the colony was there waiting for her, but also when she saw the holoprojection of the radio still hovering above the table. Her left eye twitched involuntarily, and she had to put both hands on the table to stop them from shaking.

_So she knows!_

“Let me cut to the chase,” Derek spoke first, and everyone in the room waited. Isaac leant forward on the table and rolled up his computer. The hologram disappeared. “Hayden, we have grounds to believe that you are involved with the crews of these ships from Canaan, which we believe are planning some sort of sabotage that has to do with the crew coming tomorrow.”

“Derek, let me explain—” she began to say, but the commander put up his hand, indicating that he was not finished yet.

“You will have time to explain, but let us expose our case. We think that you are involved with these crews’ plans. We think that you have a past in common that predates your days on Beacon H. We _know_ that these crews are using modern communication equipment that has jammed our signals twice. The question is if you are betraying your colony willingly or if they have somehow coerced you into collaborating with them.”

Isaac observed Hayden as Derek laid down their doubts and certainties, and he did not miss how pained Hayden had looked when the Terran mentioned the colony. _Their_ colony. Either subconsciously or deliberately, the station commander wanted to remind the administrator of their shared history, appealing to whatever sense of belonging or community loyalty she may have. He was an Icer, his found family was made of Gasers, his boss was a Terran – but they were all Koops on Beacon H.

“Considering the time frame we have,” Braeden picked up on the interrogation, not yet giving Hayden a chance to explain herself, “we would really appreciate your collaboration, if not out of professional courtesy, at least as a reminder of our friendship. This is, as of now, an internal security inquiry and anything you may say will be taken as an official statement.”

Hayden laced her fingers and looked down, sinking her shoulders as she listened to Braeden’s explanation of the imminent process. Isaac knew this was the procedure, but whatever had happened, it was clear that Hayden was feeling _something_. The engineer guessed it was guilt, and hopefully remorse. She had not expected her to chuckle in hysterics.

He looked at Erica and Boyd, who stared back at him with the same expression of not understanding.

“… is this funny?” Derek growled.

“You do _not_ understand,” Hayden said with wild eyes and still half-laughing. “This is beyond sabotage.”

“Hayden, please,” Isaac tried to intervene, suddenly realising how petty reacting to Derek’s accusatory concerns with sarcasm looked from the outside. It was satisfying, true, but this was not a brawl in the canteen.

“No, Isaac. You don’t understand. None of you understand!”

“Care to explain then?” Braeden asked with a steely, flat tone.

“This is…” and then she stopped. Her lip began to tremble, and she had to gulp down and pinch the bridge of her nose before speaking again, but when she did so, it was not the same daring and confident tone she had used. “This goes beyond sabotage. This is just the first part of a long-term plan none of you could even conceive.”

“Try us,” Derek said, patiently. Hayden let out another short burst of hysteric laughter.

“This is part of a larger invasion—and _no_ , this is not simply space pirates.”

This caught everyone’s attention. By saying this, Hayden had admitted to being not only a traitor, but also a potential infiltrated enemy. But Isaac wanted to believe that there had to be something else, because when she spoke next it was clear that she was struggling to put her words together out of raw fear.

“That radio that you inspected and have linked to Argent Industries?” she pointed at Isaac. “That is an Argent manufacture alright, but it is not new. It is actually quite an outdated model already, as far as I can tell. That model was produced at least five years ago in the industrial orbital stations of Anacreon.”

“Anacreon?” Deaton asked.

“Yes, doctor, Anacreon,” she said, steadying her breath. “And I guess that you are the only one who knows about this?”

“Anacreon was mentioned in old archived Argent documents,” the doctor scrunched his face, trying to make sense of that revelation.

“Where _is_ Anacreon,” Erica asked what everyone wanted to know.

“Anacreon is the main planet in the Alpha Centauri system,” Hayden replied, almost in a whisper.

Here is where Isaac began to make connections.

“Okay, hang on, Hayden. Alpha Centauri, random exoplanets, and Argent Industries? You must be joking,” he snorted, but the administrator looked at him and simply nodded silently. “You’re talking about the Lost Expedition?”

“Wait,” Derek intervened; he also knew his Space Age history. “Gerard Argent and the _SSCS Unity_ never made it beyond the Oort Cloud. Everyone knows that. It’s not possible to cross the Oort Cloud.”

“I can assure you, Derek, it is,” Hayden clarified. “I’ve crossed it myself – that’s how I came to Beacon H from Anacreon. And Gerard Argent and the Lost Expedition to Alpha Centauri? That was not a catastrophe. But it was not an absolute success either.”

**~ * ~**

Once she finished talking, Hayden waited with her hands flat on the table, staring down at her fingers.

Isaac had listened to every word Hayden had said, but he had soon got lost in the sheer volume of new information she had concentrated in such a short explanation. Lost Colonists infiltrated in the Solar System preparing an invasion? Two hundred years’ worth of revenge? Forty years’ worth of infiltration?

Nothing from her explanation made sense to him. If there was something that Isaac had learnt by heart from a tender age it was the history of space colonisation. The Human Federation that had unified all the colonies of the Solar System had prepared a long-range expedition that could save humankind by establishing a new colonising node, a stepping stone for future colonies across the galaxy. That was his truth. For twenty years, the brightest astronaval minds of all seven systems researched new engines that could generate almost light-speed thrust. Scores of asteroids and minor moons were disintegrated to extract all their usable components, and the forges of Mercury worked non-stop for this single project. Every single shipyard built and designed parts, contributing to the greatest joint effort humankind had ever seen. A crew of several tens of thousands was selected, and over one hundred thousand colonists were drafted. All hopes for the future of the species resided on the ingenuity and might of the combined efforts of all human colonies.

But three weeks after leaving Pluto, Captain Gerard Argent, designated plenipotentiary colony commander and former admiral of the Solar Fleet, sent his last report back to the relay stations. After that, the _Unity_ vanished in the Oort Cloud. Mining stations in the Kuiper Belt recorded seeing debris belonging to the ship floating back towards the Sun, ejected backwards by a massive explosion – the remains of which were found by search parties. But the _Unity_ was never seen again.

That had been over two hundred years ago. That was a fact.

And yet, with each word she had spoken, Hayden had dismantled this deeply-founded belief.

“You are telling us that the old timers’ stories of Lost Colonists are true?” Isaac needed clarification. “You are telling us that the tales of odd radio signals coming from vanishing asteroids and disappearing ships are _actually_ true?”

When Isaac finished his question, Erica, Boyd, and Greenberg barged in with questions of their own. Derek had to slam his fist on the table before asking Hayden to explain everything again.

“Captain Gerard Argent brought the _Unity_ to the edge of the Oort Cloud, to the far extreme of the Kuiper Belt,” she explained. “The _Unity_ had an experimental engine that would allow the ship to cross the vast interstellar distances faster than the ships that ferry around the Sun.”

“All tests worked,” Isaac thought aloud; he had read about this. “A few experimental ships with this engine reached a fourth of light speed.”

“The Federation put pressure on Argent Industries to improve and create an engine fit for the _Unity_ ,” Derek added. “It was imperative that the colony was dispatched to show that the Federation could deliver its promises to the various councils.”

“The _Unity_ reached the rim of the Kuiper Belt at normal speed,” Hayden continued. “Three weeks later they reached the edge of the Oort Cloud. The colonist and the crew were put into hibernation. Captain Argent prepared the ship for cruising speed, and then there was an explosion.”

“The ship had been prepared to travel at a fifth of the speed of light, it was planned that he ship would reach Alpha Centauri in under thirty years,” Derek explained, and Isaac nodded in agreement. “But the ship exploded, because it’s impossible for such large ships to travel at those speeds.”

“There was an explosion on the _Unity_ , that much is true,” Hayden told everyone. “But it was not a mechanical failure, or a failure in the design: the _Unity_ exploded because it reached critical speed at the edge of the Sun’s gravitational well and entered into a hyperlane.”

“A hyperlane?”

“Is that what Argent Industries is looking into now?” Braeden asked, looking at Deaton.

“They may well be. Hyperlanes definitely appear mentioned in the background research, but I also thought that that option had been discarded after the Lost Expedition. Hyperlanes are meant to be corridors where time-space warps,” Deaton explained. “They are meant to begin and end at the edge of stellar gravitational wells, but this is just a theory…”

“Hyperlanes had been dismissed as an impossibility and no calculations made to counter the astronomical amounts of stress the ship would endure,” Hayden admitted. “So when the _Unity_ tried to accelerate in the vicinity of the lane, the hull breached. Two outer stern sections of the ship broke off when the prow was already in the lane, and those are the exploded remains that gravitated back towards the Sun.”

“But the rest of the ship continued forward through the lane?”

“For four months, up to the edge of the gravitational well of the Alpha Centauri system,” the administrator confirmed. “During that time the colonists had to repair a fissured hull and survive with the consequences: loss of lives, and of air and other stored resources. There were radiation leaks and contaminated life support systems. Worse of all was the effect it had on implants.”

“Implants? What problem with implants? I’ve travelled through space and never had a problem,” Erica did not understand. Isaac knew that she had a neuro-implant that controlled her seizures. Deucalion had some too that allowed him to see, of course. Even Scott had one that kept his asthma in check.

“The implants of those days were very different,” Deaton intervened. “Our implants are simply corrective and minimally protective. Back then they were also designed to _enhance_. They were banned because of the glitches.”

“Glitches?”

“They were too ambitious,” the doctor said vaguely, hinting at but not detailing whatever truculent stories he knew about. “Too experimental.”

“Captain Argent had several implants,” Hayden continued. “Neural, kinetic, endocrine. He has more now to counter the black ooze.” She was about to go on, but Braeden interrupted.

“ _Now_?”

“Black ooze?”

Hayden stopped. Isaac could see cold sweat pearling her forehead.

“Supreme Alpha Gerard Argent has prolonged his life to this day,” she said in a small voice.

“Supreme _what—_? You’re telling us he’s, like, over two hundred?”

“We don’t count time in Terran solar orbits, although we need to understand them in order to live here,” Hayden explained, letting herself be seen as an outsider for the first time since she began her explanation. “But since the day he led our exiles through the lane, the Supreme Alpha has ruled his people. That will make him 263 years old.”

“So a prehistoric, patched-up old man is planning an invasion of the Solar System?” Isaac snorted, and Derek, who was getting impatient, growled.

“All the colonists who had implants suffered greatly during the trip, and most had been given extra implants to help them survive the long trip,” Hayden seemed more apprehensive to explain this. “It was over four months of constant and agonising pain while their bodies produced a black ooze. The background radiation and the warping of space-time affected the components of the bionic improvements, and many people died of pure exhaustion.”

Nobody dared interrupt. The tale was outrageous and unbelievable; but when Isaac looked at Deaton, who had gone pale, he could tell that the doctor believed it.

“We are taught that this was a punishment devised by the Solars,” she nodded at them. Apparently they were all called Solars by the lost colonists. “We were told that this was done on purpose, a way of culling the overpopulated colonies of the Solar System, by giving them faulty implants and sending them into outer space. Gerard wants revenge. And he wants to make Solars pay.”

“How?” Braeden demanded, already in analytic and tactical overdrive. “What is the plan, and why Beacon H.”

“It’s not only Beacon H,” Hayden continued. “Gerard has been planning this ever since the colony was established on Anacreon. We researched into faster-than-light travel. We researched the hyperlanes. We designed new technology and new ships—like the ones currently docked here.”

“Including the radios? Including that tholin compressor?” Isaac frowned. Somehow it made sense that these new ships had advanced technology and new materials based on museum pieces from two centuries before – their technology had diverted then and had clearly surpassed them. “And Tracy’s weird gizmo…”

“For the last four decades infiltrated spies have been gathering information and monitoring the developments of the Solar System, planted across the systems in key positions, acting as dormant cells, waiting for the moment when—”

“Who else is a spy on Beacon H?” Braeden interrupted.

“It was just me,” Hayden admitted. “I was never sure because infiltrated cells are not meant to know about each other – but when Theo arrived, he handed me the codes for the Outer Rim. It’s only me and the docked crews that are part of the invasion. I am meant to go to the other stations of the Kuiper Belt to activate the other cells and take over the outer colonies.”

This was met with a ruckus as Boyd, Derek, and Erica asked their own questions all at once. Isaac remained silent, lost in his thoughts and still trying to process everything.

“Okay, okay, calm down!” Braeden yelled. When Isaac managed to finally focus back to the room around him, he saw that Braeden’s weapon was on the table and that Hayden was on the verge of tears.

“I promise, my life here has _changed_ me!” the administrator was pleading. “You don’t know what it is to live on Anacreon, in the regimented society created by the Originals, harvesting organs for their oozing implants. We were taught to hate you – we were told that you had wished this suffering on your own people and that you could not be trusted to control this section of the Galaxy. And then? And _then_ I arrived here, to the last corner of your underdeveloped system. I got to learn what it is to start a new colony, about the hopes and expectations of the colonists. I learnt what it meant to be a Koop and I learnt about your views of the Alpha Centauri expedition.”

Isaac looked at Braeden and Derek, who were staring at Hayden with twin icy glares. Isaac must have missed something that had triggered this confrontation, but at least the Commander was listening.

“Please I _swear_ , I have no intention to lose what I’ve got here. I don’t want Gerard and the rest of his hunters here destroying what I’ve come to love and feel as my own.”

“But you’re not – You’re an infiltrated spy that has been trading our secrets behind our backs for years. You have been helping these crews all this while. And you have the nerve now to appeal to us, saying that you want to help? Only now?”

“I know it’s difficult to believe, but please, Derek, Braeden; I wished I could have told you earlier, but I did not know who else was an infiltrated spy. And I was terrified of telling you after they revealed themselves because I cannot _not_ collaborate with them. Otherwise they would have found out that I was betraying them and—”

“And how exactly are you betraying them?”

“Christ!” Hayden cursed in an unexpected old fashion. “I am telling you everything!”

“Only because we cornered you.”

“Please, believe me that until now I did not have a _choice_!” Hayden yelled, clenching her fists. “I was a coward, yes. I wanted to trust you, but I did not know whom I could trust. And now, they are here, they are dangerous, and if I had tried anything too early with you, they would have found out and got rid of me, and you’d never have had a chance!”

A tense silence followed, and Hayden took it as an indication that she could continue with her explanation.

“I was meant to board on the _Melissa_ when she left, with Theo,” she looked at Isaac, whom she knew would be more than happy to believe her. “Theo is in charge of activating all the dormant cells between here and Mars. We were meant to befriend Malia and Liam in order to gain access to the _Melissa_ , but I could not sabotage the invasion if I left Beacon H.”

Isaac’s head was pounding. He could feel pain accumulating just behind his eyes, and his stomach was churning. But he could see the sense in Hayden’s explanation. He had seen her encounter with Theo, and he had seen how Donovan and Tracy and Josh had behaved around her, and how she had reacted. This was way wilder than the crazy ex-boyfriend and school bullies story that he had fabricated about her, but it made sense. And he wanted to believe her. But it had been almost a month since the _Melissa_ had left.

“What is your plan?”

**~ * ~**

It was difficult to go on as if nothing had happened. Beacon H, the colony they had all built and where they lived, was the first target of a large invasion. Infiltrated commandos were walking around the Avenue, sharing meals with them in the canteen. Worst of all was that Theo, the oh-not-so-innocent captain of the _Chimera_ was on the _Melissa_ with his boyfriend and his friends. And they were under precise instructions to not communicate outside the station.

Isaac cursed.

When he reached the far side of the Sun corridor of Block A, Isaac knocked on the familiar door and, using his key, he let himself in. “Hello?”

“Hey, Isaac,” Leonor Hewitt smiled at him and walked towards her foster son to give him a welcoming hug. “We were not expecting to see you today, but you’re right in time for dinner.”

“Thanks,” he said nervously, returning the hug. From the living room, Mr Hewitt waved at him. “Is Mason in?”

“He’s in your room, darling. You’re staying for dinner,” it was not a question, but Isaac did not oppose.

“Hey!” Mason appeared from their old room with a big smile. “You’ve been busy ‘til late today, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah, erm… can I say something?” he said, fidgeting with his fingers nervously.

“Is this about Brett?” Leonor smirked knowingly. “It would have been great if you had brought him over for dinner one day, Isaac.”

“I- I- erm… actually,” before explaining anything, Isaac went to the main controller of the cabin’s AI and tapped in his security codes.

“Isaac, what’s wrong?” Jeff Hewitt asked, now standing by his wife. But Isaac did not respond until the AI beeped and informed that the pod was isolated. “What are you doing?” he said, getting scared.

“Okay, okay, phew,” he sighed as he raked his fingers through his blond hair. “I- I- okay. Erm…”

“ _Isaac!_ ” Mason barked.

“Please, sit down,” the engineer said, and his family did so, looking at him with increased concern.

“You’re scaring us, sweetheart.”

“This is official colony business,” Isaac started his explanation. “It is top secret, nobody can know about this for the next twenty-four hours, and we cannot communicate outside the colony,” he added firmly, but clearly not liking the idea himself.

“What’s going on?” Jeff asked, holding his wife’s hand.

Isaac told them.

He explained what Hayden had told them; everything from the Alpha Centauri expedition to the infiltrations and the upcoming attack. Mr and Mrs Hewitt could hardly believe the story, but Mason was quick to understand the implications and to make connections between the things that Isaac had presented. Worse of all was that they all understood that Corey was out in the observatory, cut away from Beacon H, and that they could not contact him until the situation was solved.

“I’m sorry, Mase, but you understand, right?” Isaac still needed to convince himself too, because he was desperate to send Brett a message to warn him and to explain that he was going to be okay. “They are likely monitoring our communications, and if the only advantage we have is the element of surprise against their advanced tech and their numbers, we cannot risk it.”

“I know,” Mason hung his head, and his father threw an arm around his shoulders, comforting him. “I know.”

“I understand why you are telling us this,” Leonor said. “But is there anything the Commander needs us to do?”

“Derek needs all non-enlisted personnel to go around _your_ daily life as normal, until 11:35 standard.”

“Wait,” Mrs Hewitt interrupted. “Non-enlisted personnel?”

“Yes,” Isaac continued, looking now straight at Mason. “At that time you are instructed to return to the accommodation blocks and evacuate the hub.”

“What about enlisted personnel?” Mason asked with a flat tone. He was Chief Astronomer. He still counted as a sub-lieutenant of the Ultima Thule Frontier Rangers. Much like Isaac, the last time he touched a weapon was when he finished his compulsory training.

Isaac bit his lip and offered an apology with his eyes before explaining what was going to happen.

**~ * ~**

Back in his pod, Isaac saw two things: a small parcel delivered by Braeden and that he had a message from Brett. Ignoring the parcel until the morning, he played the holovideo. His boyfriend was worried because Isaac had hinted at something important and seemingly dangerous without giving any details, and now he could only reply with vague and nondescript answers. He promised to explain everything later and went to bed, but he could hardly sleep – his mind was too busy trying to digest Hayden’s revelations.

In bed, with only the darkness of space coming through his porthole, Isaac felt alone.

At one point, the engineer blinked, and the next he saw was the AI automatically turning on its artificial dawn mode to wake him up. Not knowing if he had actually got any sleep, he pulled himself out of bed and got ready for the day ahead.

**~ * ~**

Isaac tried not to scratch his back too conspicuously as he walked to the canteen. The high-density polymer armour that he was wearing had never been designed to be worn under his clothes, and his skin was paying the price.

There was a tense calm in the colony. Only a fraction of the civilian population (those who would be working in or around the docking bays) had been notified about the plan, and they had been informed during the night and personally. As for those enlisted in the Frontier Rangers who worked in the hub, they were visited by Braeden and given orders to kit up discreetly. The rest would be mostly working elsewhere in the colony or on the orbital stations, and only those in commanding positions were privy to the plan with clear instructions to isolate their sectors and wait for further direct orders.

In the canteen, he ordered a cheese twirl and a lemonade and went off to sit at his usual table with Greenberg and Boyd. They had all seen each other in the workshop not five minutes before, but he still said hello.

“Have we seen any of them?” he said under his breath while he took a bite.

“Hayden was right,” Boyd answered, with his eyes fixed on the entrance to the canteen. “They have split into different crews and are quieter than usual.”

“Are we really sure about this?” Greenberg asked, also shifting uncomfortably in his clothes.

“Too late to change our minds,” Isaac said before gulping his drink.

After a while, during which the three friends made some pointless small talk about the latest Martian soap while actively not looking at Josh or Tracy, the buzzer on Isaac’s wrist pinged. He finished his drink and clapped his hand on Boyd’s shoulder. With a brow nod, he stood up and walked away.

Once he was outside the canteen, he walked towards the Sunside bays where the new ship, the _Garuda_ , was scheduled to dock. On his way there, he crossed paths with Derek and two of Braeden’s constables, who were casually strolling towards the Admin block, although the engineer knew they were positioning themselves close to the _Chimera_. The commander waved at him normally, and for once Isaac was glad that Derek was in the habit of constantly wearing his service uniform. He at least had an excuse to walk around in military gear.

Outside the dock, Isaac saw Braeden waiting for him and handed him a pile of datapads, as if this was just a normal ship inspection.

“All good?” he asked as he flicked mindlessly through the empty pad.

“Yes,” she said casually. Isaac knew she was observing how the various Lost Colonist crews were heading towards their ships. “I just hope we are right trusting her.”

“I don’t think it would make sense for her to spill at this moment otherwise,” he said through his teeth, low enough so only her could hear him. Hayden had insisted that none of the crews seemed suspicious, but it cost nothing to be extra cautious just before the operation.

“This can only go one of two ways,” she clicked her tongue and turned around to look back at the airlock and the still unoccupied dock.

“ _Sunside dock 4 calling station personnel_ ,” the voice of Veronica Reyes announced through the loudspeakers. She and her daughter were to stay in the docking coordination room and secure it, overriding the security ship release if any of the Lost Colonist ships tried to take off. “ _Incoming ship. All standard procedures apply_. _Sunside dock 4 calling station personnel._ ”

With a silent nod, Isaac and Braeden, accompanied by two fully equipped constables, positioned themselves outside the airlock. The docking procedure and the connection of the ship to the airlock seemed to take ages, and Isaac could not stop fidgeting and chewing on the edge of his scarf. Braeden had to grab his hand and squeeze it to keep him from doing it. Isaac closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, only to thank her silently with one look.

Then the warning lights of the airlock turned orange and, ultimately, green. With a woosh, the door slid open.

“Welcome to Beacon H,” Braeden said with a smile when the captain and her crew stepped out of the airlock. “I am First Lieutenant Braeden Hale, and I am the security officer of this station. This is Isaac Lahey, KB Engineer 1st class. We will be inspecting your ship before you’re allowed to disembark. This is just our standard procedure.”

“Captain Tara Raeken,” the woman introduced herself formally and curtly. Isaac had to dig his nails in his palm when he realised that this was probably Theo’s relative. They had the same nose, definitely, and the same maddening accent. “If you must. But the tholins we are carrying need to be compressed promptly.”

“Of course,” Braeden gave her a wolfish smile, but before Isaac could think if that was too much taunting for his liking, a commotion reached them from the Avenue.

Isaac and the constables turned around when they heard the scream followed by a quick succession of shots being fired.

 _Bugger_.

Something had evidently gone wrong with one of the other teams. Each group had been put in charge of intercepting and neutralising the different crews while the _Garuda_ docked, which Hayden had insisted was the best option because the new arrivals would have to be away from their ship and their comms for the routine inspection. It was meant to be quick and simple – but obviously not.

Before Isaac had time to ask himself who had screamed or if Hayden had betrayed them, Braeden, who had not looked away from Tara was already reaching for her gun.

The next thing Isaac sensed was a bright pink flash, followed by what felt like a solid barrier of cold heat that knocked him backwards. Only when his head hit the floor did he _hear_ the crackling of static and the ringing of tinnitus in his ear. 

In front of him, and in slow motion, the crew of the _Garuda_ (Tara Raeken and three others) ran in different directions. Two seemed to run out towards the Avenue, one charged down at one of the prone constables, while the captain held something solid and pointy and dived towards Braeden.

Isaac reached out with his hand to the crewman that ran closest to him, somehow getting hold of his ankle and bringing him down. His vision blurred for a second and the tinnitus intensified as he went up on his knees to keep the fallen crewman on the floor. He had never been one to pick a fight when he was little, but he definitely had learnt a handful of dirty tricks in his youth (military training be damned), and he knew that his best chance against an opponent who was likely armed was to take the advantage there and then. The Uranian jumped forward with all his strength, landing on the Lost Colonist and knocking his wind out, only to grab his head and smash it against the floor, once, twice, thrice, until he stopped wriggling. 

He rolled away, landing with his back on the floor, from where he saw that one of the constables was lying still on the floor, while Braeden and Tara were in a tight fight way above Isaac’s paygrade. That left the other crewman of the _Garuda_ , who was standing by the unconscious Koop, and looking at Isaac with predatory curiosity.

Sound slowly came back to Isaac as he tried to push himself away from the approaching brute. He could hear more shooting and screaming coming from the Avenue, as well as the thuds and hits from Braeden’s fight. Isaac started to panic, but then he felt something hard, solid, and gun-shaped pressed against his buttock, and he scrambled to pull his gun out before the Lost Colonist reached him.

Live ammunition and explosive projectiles were relics of a bygone era, although some still were used on Earth and Mars, where shooting in the open did not put the integrity of the colony in danger. On space stations, all ammunition consisted of vulcanised pellets that hid a high-voltage charge, capable of stunning upon contact with unprotected skin or otherwise bruising and damaging armour. The crewman might have been ready to pick up a fight hand-to-hand, but he had definitely not expected a weapon, so when he saw Isaac pulling the gun out he stopped. He stopped and then, realising that the fighting sounds died in the station and that none of his companions were coming his way, he turned around and ran towards his ship.

“Stop him!” Braeden ordered as she blocked a punch aimed at her kidneys. “Stop him, Isaac!”

He did as he was told. Standing up was a bit more difficult than it should have been, and his vision doubled for an instant, but he lost no time: he aimed his gun at the running foe and pulled the trigger in quick succession. The pellets missed and ricocheted towards the Medic Block. The crewman disappeared into the ship.

 _Bollocks_.

Isaac set his jaw and ran after him, into the _Garuda_. The crewman was trying to tap something on a panel and shouting some instructions to it, that were obviously not working. The engineer guessed that it was Veronica and Erica’s doing, so he allowed himself a side smirk before shooting again. This time two pellets hit their target, but the Lost Colonist must have been wearing some sort of deflector or shielding, very different from the physical armour he himself was wearing. With a curse, the crewman went deeper into his ship.

“Stop!” Isaac yelled, mostly out of frustration, not really expecting the other man to do so.

Inside, the _Garuda_ was different to the _Chimera_ or the _Wendigo._ They had clearly taken no interest in camouflaging this ship as a passing Solar vessel, but that could wait. Isaac kept following and shooting at his opponent. Whatever shielding device he had on, the pellets were wearing the protection down.

“Process copy; Gamma landing over!” Isaac heard him shout some instructions, seemingly to the ship. “Gamma landing _over_!”

 _Shit_.

The one thing that Hayden had insisted on was that the operation needed to be swift, lest the crews had time to alert Theo or the rest of the incoming fleet. She could cover up the failed attack for a while, giving them time to stop Theo.

The crewman sprinted down a long corridor leading to the bridge, and Isaac had a flashback to his Ranger training. He could almost hear Braeden repeating her instructions. So he took a knee, breathed in, exhaled and, before breathing in again, aimed and shot.

“ _Garuda_ sequence lambda-three-seven—UNGGGGGG.”

The man fell flat on his face, his feet twitching, after the pellets finally hit him. Isaac smiled smugly, but his grin turned sour when the ship’s alarm went off. The buzzer that the man had around his wrist was beeping, and a loud electric screech came from the bridge, too similar to the one Isaac had heard coming from the _Chimera_ radio.

 _FUCK_.

Isaac ran to the bridge and immediately saw the radio, which was either transmitting or about to transmit. Panicking for a second and not knowing how to operate it, the engineer reverted to the simplest solution in his book: force it shut. He pulled his gun and emptied his clip on the offending radio, which crackled as the voltage burnt the circuits and the speakers went silent.

**~ * ~**

Isaac did not remember much of the aftermath of the fight. He knew that someone came onto the _Garuda_ looking for him and that they and someone else took away the unconscious man while he stared at the radio, lost in thought. At some point he must have got out, back to the Avenue, because that was where Mason jumped to give him a hug as he asked about the cut he had on his forehead, which is when Isaac noticed that he had the left half of his face covered in blood. In the sick bay he sat next to Greenberg, who had his arm in a cast, and Braeden, who was lying down on a stretcher while Dr Deaton tended to some nasty cuts on her face. Erica walked in with Leonor Hewitt, bringing him some food, which he wolfed down the moment he realised how hungry he was.

His buzzer told him that he had seven messages from Brett, and he cursed silently because they were not allowed to contact anyone outside the colony – especially Brett who was on the same spaceship as Theo. Meanwhile, Leonor spoke to him, saying something about prisoners and Boyd and Derek. But it all went in one ear and out the other. Dr Deaton asked him some other questions, but he eventually told him to go with Mrs Hewitt and rest for a while.

Later that afternoon, when he was more aware of his surroundings, he sat down with Mason, who was in a similar position as Isaac; Corey was out in the observatory and they were all forced to remain radio silent. “What would you tell him?” Mason asked nervously.

“Anything,” he admitted. “That I’m fine. That we’re all fine. That Theo is dangerous. What about Corey?”

“Same,” Mason sighed. Isaac put a hand on his brother’s back, and Mason leant into him until he had his head on Isaac’s shoulder.

They remained silent for a few minutes.

Apparently, Mason had had it easy. The team he was in had surrounded Josh and Tracy, who gave themselves up without any resistance once they saw that the Koops were armed. Apparently, it had been Boyd and Greenberg who had encountered resistance. Donovan had lashed out violently, taking the team by surprise. Thankfully Derek was not that far. The worst encounter had been outside the _Garuda_ , with one dead constable and a badly injured Braeden.

Their buzzers beeped in unison, and they walked to the Security Building, where Derek had installed the emergency committee room. As they crossed the Avenue, Isaac caught a glimpse of the damaged area around the airlock to the _Garuda_ , which had been damaged by whatever pulse weapon Tara Raeken had detonated. Black pellets could be seen lodged firmly in dented walls and pillars.

“Come on in,” Derek said sombrely when Mason knocked on the door.

They both walked in and Isaac sat in what had been, in normal circumstances, his usual seat, but there were more people in the room this time. Other than the members of the colony steering committee, Mason was there, and so were Deaton, Veronica Reyes and Leonor Hewitt, amongst others.

“Thank you for coming,” Derek said curtly. Isaac could tell that he was angry because of what happened to his wife. “I’ll keep this short. Congratulations everyone for a quick and effective response to the threat. All the hostiles are now in custody. Hayden has proceeded according to the Lost Colonist plan and reported back to the invading fleet, confirming that Beacon H has been taken.”

This was met with a few nods, but everyone knew better than to interrupt Derek.

“We can only keep up the ruse for a limited amount of time. The invading fleet is currently approaching our sector cloaked and camouflaged on or behind the new comet that Chief Astronomer Hewitt identified a few weeks ago.”

The colony commander looked at Hayden, who nodded.

“Currently we know that a key individual travelling towards the inner sectors will be individually activating the dormant infiltrated cells. We have every reason to believe that these infiltrators are at every single level of colonial administration and essential positions of planetary communications. Their military encryptions are superior to ours, which means that we can only alert other councils in person and/or only after we have rounded and captured the infiltrated Lost Colonists.”

“So what next?” Ms Reyes asked. Derek turned to Hayden, leaving her to answer the question.

“We need a way to catch up with the _Melissa_ or stop them before they advance any further. We also need to access Theo Raeken’s communication encrypter in order to be able to locate all other infiltrated agents. The codes that may have been stored in the radio of the _Garuda_ were wiped out…”

The administrator looked guiltily at Isaac, even if it was not her fault, but the engineer felt that this still and somehow shifted the blame to him. Derek must have seen Isaac’s eyes hardening because he stood up and silenced him with a look.

“The colony is not safe, because we are not prepared for any large-scale military action. We cannot evacuate because that would look suspicious. And currently, with the data we have from Hayden, we can only directly alert other stations in the Kuiper Belt.”

“It’s looking grim, then?” Greenberg said out of turn.

“We need options and we need ideas. And we need them now.”

During the silence that followed, Isaac’s brain went in overdrive. He had not had any time until now to digest and process the practical implications of Gerard Argent’s invasion. His home could be lost. His new family could be ejected into space, refugees on a re-purposed cargo ship. Corey was at that very moment far away in the observatory, isolated from the colony, and even if Mason would not agree, he was ready to get very angry on his behalf.

Of course, there was also Theo. But Theo was going to Oberon. And while communicating with Brett may put him and the rest of the crew of the _Melissa_ in danger (Hayden had insisted that he could be ruthless and dangerous) perhaps there was something else he could do. Perhaps he could offer a solution. He still had the one friend on Oberon, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well then. All the cards are on the table! Lost Colonists -- who would have thought? Hopefully all the hints that I had left in the previous chapters make sense now.
> 
> Next chapter will be ready this Friday and that will be the last one from Isaac's POV. Then we'll move on to see everything through Brett's eyes, probably until the end of the fic! (although the second half may have to wait a bit as I was planning on riting the side stories first thing in the new year whle I plan out the second half of the fic)
> 
> And hope everyone out there is safe and well, seeing that here we are in full lockdown again.


	17. So long, and thanks for all the fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Okay, I… erm… well,” Isaac shifted uncomfortably. “So, listen. This going to sound silly, but what about a plain coded message sent on a civilian channel?”  
> “You want to holocall your friend?”  
> “No,” Isaac rolled his eyes. “A normal message, no encryption, just a plain text-based code. Something so mundanely innocent that it will pass unnoticed.”
> 
> OR: Isaac puts forward hiis plan to contact his friend on Oberon to stop Theo

“I think I know how we can do it,” Isaac said as he went through the idea once again in his head. “Yes, actually,” he insisted, now with more confidence. “I _know_ how we can do it!”

“Do what?”

“We need to stop the _Melissa_ from getting to the inner systems, right?” Everyone agreed. Derek nodded, encouraging Isaac to continue. “They’re about to get to Uranus. Brett told me,” he coughed a bit uncomfortably when he mentioned Brett’s name aloud, but everyone remained silent, waiting for more. “So, because they’re stopping at the Oberon colony, I know the right person who could hold them.”

“Who’s this person?” Braeden asked.

“It’s actually an old friend of Derek’s,” Isaac allowed himself a smile. “Jackson Whittemore.”

The commander scrunched his face for a second until he remembered the day two spotty teenagers had tried to sneak onto his ship.

“How’s your old school friend going to help us?” Derek asked, not dismissing the plan just yet.

“He’s a member of the Colony Council now, as far as I know. He’s the one person that we could contact, and I vouch for him – we’ve been friends since we were this tall,” Isaac put his hand down at his knee level.

“How do we know that he is not also an infiltrated spy?” Derek tried to look for flaws in the plan. “His father, if I remember correctly, was also in the council. Isn’t that the kind of position where we expect infiltrated spies?”

“Operatives are encouraged to form families and keep up appearances,” Hayden chipped in. “But trying to re-educate children for the cause is not advisable. Children with Solar parents normally have interacted too much with non-Anacreonians and only the best-trained operatives can successfully recruit a Solar-born child.”

“And I vouch for him,” Isaac insisted, crossing his arms over his chest. He was not sure if that counted much in their current predicament, though. “He just needs to hold the _Melissa_ and detain Theo—”

“That would not be wise,” Braeden said with her cold, analytical tone. “We do not know who his contacts on Oberon are. Arresting him would blow our cover.”

“How do we find out who else is an infiltrated spy?”

“Theo has the contacts coded in his radio,” Hayden explained.

“Can’t we get the crew of the _Melissa_ to arrest Theo on board?” Derek suggested. “They can get hold of his radio then.”

“It won’t work,” the Lost Colonist sighed. “These radios are set to a DNA pattern so that only Anacreonians with the correct genomic sequence can use them. And if they’re expecting him, and he does not appear then the agents will try to contact the main fleet.”

“And can _you_ use them?” the colony commander asked. There was a tense pause as Hayden nodded silently.

“Yes. I can.”

Derek hung his head as he sighed. The rest of the people in the meeting room looked impatiently between their commander (who had to make the decision), Hayden (who only found flaws in their ideas) and Isaac (who seemed to be the only one with a plan). Isaac noticed how Erica looked at him with particular worry, because both of them knew that Isaac had never been one to put himself forward as a leading strategist. The planetologist knew that her friend just wanted to make his suggestion and retreat back in his workshop, but the engineer knew that this was the one time when that was not going to be an option – especially since Brett and Scott and the rest of the crew were with Theo on the _Melissa_.

“So we need to hold the _Melissa_ on Oberon and get you there. And there’s also the infiltrated spies in the Kuiper Belt who I guess are waiting for someone to contact them,” Derek summarised. “That’s three main problems now, and we only have a plan for one of them,” he added pointing at Isaac.

“And how do you intend to contact him, anyways?” Boyd asked. “I don’t want to be the one to bring us down, but as far as I remember we cannot contact other planets in case they’re listening. How are you going to tell your friend to stop the _Melissa_?”

“And Uranus is over thirty AUs away,” Braeden muttered, mostly to Derek. “It’s going to take a month to get a team with Hayden there, even with an unloaded glider.”

Hayden, who had been quiet and waiting for Derek to reach that very conclusion, took a deep breath before saying “not if we use the _Chimera_.” When nobody interrupted her suggestion of using a cargo ship for a speedy trip to the inner systems, she continued. “The _Chimera_ , like the other ships, can probably do twice that speed. Maybe three times. They are not equipped with actual FTL engines, but their design is still more advanced…”

Greenberg and Isaac looked at each other. That made sense. They had never had a chance to have a proper look at how the new ships worked, but they were not surprised at this.

“Okay, that could be an option,” Derek admitted, but only temporarily. “Now, about the other issues…”

“Are they likely to be monitoring _all_ civilian communications?” Isaac turned to Hayden, already with a vague idea in his mind.

“The hunter AI is programmed to process all encrypted communications,” the administrator admitted. “The encrypting algorithms used here are... erm… not as advanced as theirs,” she carefully said, putting distance between her and the other Lost Colonists.

“They probably have AIs checking for specific buzzwords,” Deaton surprised everyone by speaking for the first time.

“Okay, I… erm… well,” Isaac shifted uncomfortably. “So, listen. This going to sound silly, _but_ what about a plain coded message sent on a civilian channel?”

“You want to _holocall_ your friend?”

“No,” Isaac rolled his eyes. “A normal message, no encryption, just a plain text-based code. Something so mundanely innocent that it will pass unnoticed.”

“That is not a bad idea,” Deaton sided with Isaac, even if Derek still stared at him, unimpressed. “This type of AIs will have no problem unlocking our complex electronic encryptions, and I am sure they would have no problem breaking any alphanumerical cyphers. Now, a code which is based on linguistic logic or word play could serve our purpose, but those only work if the two interlocutors are aware of the rules of the game.”

This was met with a brief silence, which Isaac savoured, but he was interrupted before he could explain any further.

“I can’t believe you’re such a _dork_ ,” Mason said with an incredulous smile as he realised what his foster brother was planning, making Isaac snort.

“Mr Hewitt,” Derek growled.

“No, commander, Isaac does actually have a word-play code with this friend of his,” Mason insisted. Other than Camden, he was probably the only other person who knew about his and Jackson’s secret code.

“Isaac?”

“I wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise, Derek.”

The commander pinched the bridge of his nose and then massaged his brow. “You want us to transmit complex intel through an open channel camouflaged with plays of words?”

“You _are_ a dork, Lahey,” Erica said.

“Okay, enough, everyone,” Derek growled before anyone else interrupted. “Dr Deaton, Hayden: please tell me this is not as stupid as it sounds.”

The medic and the administrator exchanged a glance and discussed the pros and cons of Isaac’s suggestion while the commander and the security officer conferred privately as they heard the arguments. After a while, and seeing that nobody could suggest any viable alternatives, Derek concluded the meeting. He ordered Isaac and Deaton to prepare a message while he instructed Greenberg and Boyd to go with Hayden and him to the _Chimera_ to see how they could get it ready. Braeden, meanwhile, asked Erica, Mason and a few others to stay behind in order to discuss how they were going to deal with the infiltrated spies in the other colonies of the Kuiper Belt and how to come up with a discrete colony evacuation plan.

**~ * ~**

“Are you sure of this, Doc?” Isaac asked once they reached Deaton’s office, which was going to be quieter and less busy than the engineering workshop.

“This was your idea, Isaac.”

“That’s why I’m worried – I’ve never been the one to have the good ideas! And now we’re trying to save the Solar System with the game that—”

“Relax, Isaac,” he said with his usual, calming voice. “Take a couple of deep breaths, and then explain to me what your code was.”

“We, well… We used to take every third word and change it to its opposite. I mean, we were _ten_.”

“That is quite clever. Simple and straight forward.”

“We came up with a new one eventually, because my brother cracked it,” he allowed himself to remember that with fondness, and his lips curved involuntarily. “But we never got to use it much.”

“Okay,” Deaton said with patience. “What was this second code?”

“Oh, well, we kept the three-word rule in each sentence, but we also threw in other words that we had, like, changed the meaning of?” Isaac admitted, slightly embarrassed that he was explaining their secret language to an adult in a life-or-death situation. “And then if we used one of those words, you’d start counting from that one.”

Deaton rubbed his chin as he thought for what felt like hours.

“That should look plain enough for an AI to let it passed unnoticed. It won’t pass the hard scrutiny of a code breaker, I should say, but we must trust that the machine will not recognise it.”

Isaac nodded as he scratched his elbow. “So we’re using it?”

“Let’s think of what message we need to transmit and then we’ll see if we can put it into code,” was Deaton’s plain reply.

Then, to Isaac’s surprise, Dr Deaton opened a drawer and pulled out an old-fashioned paper notebook. Isaac had always used the modern acetate types, like the one he kept in his telescope case. He also pulled out a pen with real ink. Isaac knew how to write by hand, partly because of the awe towards tradition and old ways they cultivated in the Uranus System, partly because of his trade. For Isaac, it was sometimes useful to scribble measurements or notes on pieces of equipment or in circumstances when it was either not possible or else too inconvenient to type. But Deaton clearly was a skilled calligrapher and Isaac suspected that he probably wrote more than he typed.

“It’s better if we create the coded message on this before typing it,” the doctor explained when he saw Isaac’s dropped jaw. If this was one of his old habits as a spy (and he was a good one, since he had managed to retire), Isaac was not going to object. “Shall we begin?”

It took them a while, and they went through many drafts, first of what exactly they needed to tell Jackson and then trying to fit it into a message that seemed innocent enough and that avoided potential buzzwords. Derek tried to contact him a couple of times, but they gave him vague replies. It was more difficult to ignore when Isaac received yet another message from Brett. Once they were happy with the form and the content, they wrote one final version on an acetate sheet and took it to Derek, who was supervising the work on the _Chimera_.

“So, this is it?” the commander had a quick look at the acetate sheet and read it through. Terrans were happy to stick to the old days, and had no problem reading handwriting.

“Yes. What do you think?”

“It makes my head hurt,” he said after a second glance. “Is this how you speak in the Uranus System?”

Isaac said nothing, because he knew that Derek did not mean anything by that and because he was conscious he had used as much Icer slang as he could, to obscure it further.

“Go on, have a read,” Isaac encouraged. Derek arched an eyebrow in response, but did as he was asked.

The letter started like any normal message did, but it soon got too confusing:

> _Hi Jackson. I’m lush, including **a big tree**. A muck station is going my way from by there with a friend named Theo. He’s tamping, I’ll **gof** him. Ideally you’d release his sus? It’s a **really big tree**. The usual **wires** are no tamp. If you’d **mitch** him that’d be **tidy**. Also, there’s the drive called Brett. You could ‘ear for him and shut him all. Stay safe. See you in a week **with** **fritters?**_

“What are those marked words?”

“Those are the key words,” Isaac explained.

“It looks like _sensical_ gibberish. Anyone reading it could tell there’s something going on there."

“But not an AI,” Deaton insisted before giving the colony commander a rough translation of the message. “Sometimes hiding in plain sight pays off.”

Derek considered this for a second. Was that really their only hope? Deaton vouched for this method, Isaac trusted this kid, and they were running out of time, so he huffed and handed the acetate back.

“Okay, this will have to do. But we still cannot send it – if anything other than an Anacreonian signal comes out of Beacon H we’ll be exposed. You’ll need to send this when you’re off station—I assume you’re going with Hayden, right? You’re our only contact with Jackson.”

Isaac had quietly assumed that he was, but he was still not happy with the idea of going back to Oberon. He was only doing it for Brett and his friends. Also for his colony and the Solar System, of course, but Isaac was well aware of how his priorities ranked.

“Who else is coming?” the engineer asked. “You’re not only sending the two of us, are you?”

“I am!” a familiar voice called from behind him, and he only needed to see Derek’s frustrated eyeroll to know who was going to be travelling with them. “I’m the best pilot this station has, and Derek knows it!”

Erica threw an arm around Isaac’s shoulders, which was a bit awkward and she ended up pulling him down to her height.

“Oh, great…”

“Don’t you give me that, Lahey,” she whispered a threat into his ear.

Isaac was not sure about how much Erica was exaggerating, but he knew that she at least knew how to fly a dozen different types of ship. This was partly her hobby, partly a result of her being the planetologist who had to visit every single planetoid and asteroid before anything was built on or around it.

“Who else is coming?”

“For the time being, only you three.”

“What?” Isaac wriggled out of Erica’s grasp.

“We cannot spare any more people,” Derek said as he began to walk away from the _Chimera_ and towards the Admin Block. “We have an evacuation and a resistance to organise. And the fewer, the better in this type of mission.”

“Wait, _what_?” Isaac had not realised that things had developed so quickly while they were busy writing the message. He walked briskly behind his commander. “This is a mission now? Great!”

“You better go and get ready,” Derek said without turning back, leaving a baffled Isaac behind.

**~ * ~**

When Isaac got to the _Chimera_ , Boyd and Greenberg (his arm still in a cast) were studying the ship and tinkering with the controls. The engineer knocked on a wall to draw his friends’ attention.

“So, what can you tell me?” Isaac said as he looked around. The ship seemed _different_.

“Well, if Hayden is right, this thing can do three AUs in a day,” Boyd said, tapping his omnitool on the main control panel of the bridge. “The cabins and life support, together with the engines and a few other auxiliary units form the core of the ship. The cargo sections and the loading mechanisms detach, apparently. They form an optional trailer.”

“It’s very clever,” Greenberg said as he typed on his buzzer with difficulty. “I’m quite jealous myself. Would have loved to travel on this… In different circumstances, ideally.”

“But how—”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Boyd guessed what his friend was going to say. “Hayden and Erica have already had a chat about how this ship works.”

“Are you sure about this, Isaac?” Greenberg unexpectedly asked. “She’s one of _them_ , you know?”

“I don’t think she has any sympathy left towards them,” Isaac dismissed the mechanic’s worries, mostly because he had no time for that right now. “You’ve seen how they treated her.”

“I know, boss, but what if this is all a double bluff?”

“I think that’s partly why Erica is going with you,” Boyd added. “You know she won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

“What are you two doing then?” Isaac asked, and the mechanic and the robotech looked at each other with indecision.

“We’re waiting for Derek to tell us,” Boyd said in the end. “We have to fit the _Wendigo_ and the _Garuda_ so someone can go and warn the other colonies of the Kuiper Belt. We have to prepare every other ship available for the evacuation. We have to try and turn the shielder bots into something that could face a battleship...”

The prospects were not good. They knew that the station had never been designed for these eventualities. Space warfare was a trope of stories of old, and large scale evacuations were never pleasant. For a small and distant colony like Beacon H, every scenario they could think of ended very badly. The three fell silent for a few instants.

“Are you sure you can do all of that without me?” Isaac smirked at last, only to ease the sudden dark mood, because he knew they were perfectly capable of doing that (and more) without him.

“We’re just waiting for you to _leave_ so we can finish all the work,” Boyd joked, but there was still sadness in his eyes.

“Well, just tell me what you need me to do here,” he offered as he instinctively toyed with the end of his scarf. “So I’ll be out of your way even faster.”

Boyd, Greenberg, and Isaac spent the rest of the day on the _Chimera_ , making sure that at least Isaac was familiar with the true nature of the ship and that it was equipped with all the things they might need. By the time they were satisfied that there was little else for them to do, it was clear that they had long missed the dinner rush in the canteen. They had a quick dinner, which they ate mostly in silence as they looked out to the Avenue, where earlier that day they had been fighting. It was not difficult for them to see the signs of the fight around them. Once they finished their meal, they all walked back to their pods, still hardly speaking until they reached Block A. They said their goodnights at the village pump, and each went their separate way.

In his pod, Isaac was notified by his AI that he had more messages from Brett, but he was not sure if he wanted to listen to them. The last time he had contacted his boyfriend had been almost twenty-four hours before, when he explained to him all about the saboteurs from Canaan and that they were going to have a meeting. That had been before Hayden had explained anything about the Lost Colonists and the upcoming invasion. That had been before they had the skirmish on Beacon H. He had not told Brett that he was going to Oberon, or that Jackson would come and find him when he landed. And there was so much he wanted to tell him!

Isaac walked to his shelves, fighting all the voices in his head that were yelling at him, telling him to see the messages and to send a reply. He picked up his two framed photos with his two families, and looked at them with care. He now wished he had one with Erica, Boyd, and Greenberg. Even with Derek and Braeden: they were a third family. After a second, Isaac put the pictures on his bed and then moved on to inspect his other possessions. There was a holo collection, part of which had come with him all the way from Oberon; there was also his gyroscopic model of Beacon H, his clothes, his shoes. He snorted and supressed a chuckle. Having a favourite shirt and a favourite pair of shoes seemed so pointless now, seeing as all the things he owned might be forever blasted into space when Gerard Argent and his fleet arrived.

So he made a pile of things he was going to need for his trip to Oberon and, as carefully as he could, packed them into a bag. The rest of the things he truly valued (including the pictures and a few things he had kept from his mother and brother), the things that he really hoped he could save, he put them in his telescope case. It only took him five minutes, but all his life on Beacon H was now tightly packed in two pieces of luggage. They were marginally bulkier than the ones he had brought with him when he first travelled to the Outer Rim but now, for the second time in his life, he had to be ready to be on the move.

**~ * ~**

Isaac opened his eyes when the lights in his room grew brighter. Not that he had slept much, though: his stomach had turned into a knot that did nothing to ease the thoughts that had echoed in his head since the moment he had decided to lie in his bed. He wanted to send Brett a message – he had to process that he was flying back to Oberon – he had to say goodbye to the Hewitts and the rest of his friends on Beacon H – he had to abandon his new-found home, his workshop, his beehives – he had to stop Theo. He had considered the option of uncorking his honey hooch, but he needed to wake up early and he was not sure if he was going to be able to stop at the right moment; it would have been just too easy to have a few extra for good measure.

So he got out of his bed and had a quick shower. He opted for breakfast in his pod, trying to finish as much from his pantry as he could. When he finished, he put the rest of his food in a crate and left it outside his door, typing in a few quick commands so one of Boyd’s bots would come to pick it up and deliver it to the kitchens. No reason to waste.

He checked the time and realised he was late for his first appointment, so he rushed out of his pod and went up the corridor to the far end of Block A – and just in time, because Leonor and Jeff Hewitt were leaving their pod as he got to the cabin.

“Hey,” he said with a sad smile, and Leonor did not hesitate before pulling the young man in for a hug. “I- erm… well…” he was lost for words, even if he already had a speech ready. “I’m sorry,” was the only thing he managed to mutter.

“What are you sorry for?” Leonor pushed him away so she could see him. Isaac noticed that her eyes were red.

“I- I- I don’t know… force of habit I guess?”

This time it was Jeff who threw his arms around Isaac.

“You don’t have to be sorry for anything, son,” Mr Hewitt said; the Uranian noted the emphasis the Hewitts always made to call him ‘son’. “You have always made us proud – even now when you go off to save the Solar System.”

That made Isaac snort briefly.

“Where’s Mason?”

“He’s already in the hub,” she told him. “He’s going to be on the first hopper to the observatory. But don’t worry—” Mrs Hewitt said before he could panic, “he’s not going anywhere just yet.”

“Okay, well… I- erm…” Isaac stammered again – he did not know why it suddenly felt so difficult to speak to the Hewitts. He closed his eyes and cleared his throat. “I have my telescope case, and I’ve got a few things in it. Maybe you could, like, keep an eye on it for me?” he asked with a small voice. “I don’t want to burden you with my crap if you are going to have to… erm… you know, _evacuate_. But—”

“We’ll keep it safe for you. Until you come back.”

Isaac smiled and felt a ball forming in his throat, which was completely silly, because why should he be feeling like that right then.

“Thanks, mum… and dad.” Isaac’s buzzer went off with a reminder and Isaac sniffed and rubbed his eyes before reading the notification. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you later, right?”

Jeff and Leonor nodded silently, and Isaac walked briskly back to his own cabin, where he grabbed his bag before rushing off to the Avenue.

That morning, the Communal Block was buzzing. Derek had made a public announcement to all colonists detailing the situation, and leaving nothing out, so there was a chaotic mix of people trying to help, people demanding action, and people who had nothing better to do than loiter around. Many people came to Isaac asking questions, but he had little time to answer, and he was not sure of what he should or could say.

“Mr Lahey, please,” a hand clamped firmly on Isaac’s shoulder, which immediately made him shiver. Then Isaac saw that it was Deucalion, who had somehow found him in the crowd.

“Hey.”

“I know you’re in a rush and that you’re off to the inner planets.”

“How do you know?” Isaac arched an eyebrow, but the former pilot simply smirked and ignored his question.

“Is there anything _I_ could do to help?” he said in a low, conspirative voice, his hand still on Isaac’s shoulder.

The engineer paused to think for a second. He knew that Deucalion could be resourceful and that he had contacts. Considering their current situation, it was hopefully clear now that he was not an infiltrated Lost Colonist (otherwise there would have been infiltrators within the infiltrators, and layer upon layer of spies, and that made his head spin), so perhaps they could use this to their advantage.

“Why are you asking me and not Derek?”

“The commander and I can work along, but he would not be happy with me collaborating…” he replied vaguely.

“Do you think you could contact your nephews for me?” Isaac suddenly thought that maybe two champion race pilots could come in handy.

“What about that nice Belter?” the blind man asked with a grin.

“It’s not _that_. But I think that maybe they could help? When we’re allowed to relay comms could you tell them to find me?” Isaac grabbed Deucalion’s adapted wrist comm and tapped his own against it, transferring his contact details. “I will probably be in the Uranus System."

Deucalion tapped his hand on Isaac’s arm, and the engineer nodded. But before Isaac could walk away, the blind man held him by the wrist.

“So long,” he said with a grin. “And thanks for all the fish.”

Isaac chuckled and shook his head, reaching out to squeeze Deucalion’s shoulder in goodbye. Isaac, after all, may or may not have shared his access codes to the <1G pisciculture bays.

Eventually Isaac made it to the bay where the _Chimera_ was waiting. Erica was coming out of the airlock and she nearly kicked over one of the loading bots that was bringing in the last crates of supplies.

“Hey, easy with that!” This was met just with a huff. “What’s wrong?” he asked when she finally stopped by his side. “Not that hyped about travelling across the Solar System on a fancy new ship anymore?”

“Yes – I’m terribly excited,” she lied and stormed away into the crowd.

Isaac scrunched his face and hoped that Erica’s mood improved soon. Otherwise, it was going to be a miserable trip. Shaking his head, he walked onto the _Chimera_ and found an empty cabin to claim as his by dropping his bag heavily on the bed. He really, _really_ wished that that particular cabin was not Theo’s (he did not have the least intention to sleep in the same bed he had) but they all looked the same, and nothing screamed ‘Captain’s cabin’, so he decided to risk it. As he walked out, he heard a familiar voice giving instructions over a wrist comm.

“Hey, Hayden,” he said, trying not to interrupt too much. The administrator turned to look at him and gave him a sad smile before putting her buzzer down.

“Hi, Isaac.”

“When will we be ready?”

“It depends on when our pilot will be ready,” the way Hayden’s brow furrowed, Isaac guessed that Hayden and Erica had already had an encounter on the ship, which bode well. “And Derek. Otherwise, and now that you’re here, we are ready whenever.”

After saying this, Hayden collapsed on one of the seats and spun on it. Isaac noticed a neat and not-that-small case (which was probably Hayden’s travelling trunk) in the corner.

“You haven’t chosen a cabin yet?”

“Maybe later. Once we’re off station,” she huffed, her attention now focused on one of the screens. Isaac nodded silently and began to walk towards the exit.

“I know we’ll have a long time to talk about this,” he added casually before he got to the corridor. “But I think you were very brave.”

“I’m not sure Erica agrees. Or most of this colony, for that matter,” she huffed.

“I mean, seeing that the choice was between us and the likes of Theo, the answer is pretty easy; but having the nerve to endure a full interrogation by Derek and Braeden? Betraying your home world to help us?”

“If only I could have done something earlier…”

“Do you think this is going to work?” Isaac asked quietly from the sliding door after a short pause.

“It better,” she concluded with a grin, and Isaac had to chuckle.

“Oh, and have you seen Mason?” he asked almost as an afterthought before he walked out.

**~ * ~**

Out in the Avenue the crowd had grown thicker, denser. It felt as if all the colony had poured out there. Considering the circumstances, any other daily routine or job seemed unimportant. Thankfully, people were not stopping him now, focused as they were on Derek, who had come out to a balcony of the Administration Block and was addressing the gathered colonists. Isaac knew what he was saying, so he just tried to walk through the mass of people, looking for Mason.

“We could never have foreseen anything similar happening,” Derek’s voice echoed through the loudspeakers. “Considering the circumstances, all enlisted personnel must report to the Security Block in the order you have been notified, while resident civilians will be the first ones to be evacuated…”

Isaac kept pushing through as the people gasped or nodded with resignation, depending on how aware they were of the situation. But if Derek was already prepared to give orders he was probably going to be asked to leave soon – where was Mason?! Isaac was _not_ leaving again on a space ship not knowing when he would next see his brother without at least saying goodbye. It was pointless to call him, so he just texted him and in less than two minutes he had a reply, and Isaac made his way to the rear entrance of the Education Block.

“What are you doing here?” Isaac asked, only slightly annoyed. His brother was there with Greenberg, Boyd and the Reyes family, all of which were sitting on the benches that lined the corridor that led to the docks.

“We’ve all heard this already,” Mason pointed at Derek and tried to smile. “We needed a place where you could find us easily.”

“Well, I haven’t – what are you going to do?”

“I’ve been granted leave,” Greenberg said, pointing at his broken arm. “But I am designated Ranger Liaison for the first batch of evacuees.”

“I’m going with Braeden and a handful of Rangers to Ultima Thule, and from there to Makemake, and Papete,” Boyd added. Isaac still had his hand on Mason’s shoulder. “We’ve got Hayden’s list and we need to fish out the Lost Colonists and slowly warn the Outer Rim.”

Isaac looked down at his brother with a frown on his face.

“I’m heading to the observatory,” Mason explained. “I need to get Corey and we need to monitor the advance of the comet.”

“What about mum and dad? And how long are you staying in the observatory?”

“They’re preparing to leave, I don’t know where they will be relocated,” Mason admitted, and Isaac had to sit on the bench, tapping his foot nervously.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Erica’s mother said, still holding her daughter’s hand. “They’ll be coming with me. We’ll all be safe. Together.”

Mason eventually sat down next to Isaac, who unconsciously reached out with his hand, and his brother took it. Derek’s voice went on, announcing the different stages of evacuation and other things that Isaac did not really pay attention to.

Isaac felt overwhelmed, and did not know exactly how he should feel, so he just sat there with Mason’s hand still in his, and sitting in silence surrounded by his friends. He knew he should say something – this was the kind of moment when people said _things_. Earth, he had even said things to Mr and Mrs Hewitt earlier that day; in his own, particular, Isaac way, true, but he had. The way in which Isaac shifted uncomfortably and twitched and frowned must have been eloquent enough, because it was Mason who spoke next.

“Yep, I know. But don’t worry. We’ll find each other.”

The Uranian chuckled, because it was not as if he had not heard that before.

“I’ll bring him back,” Erica said from where she was sitting. “I hope you don’t think you can get rid of us that easily…”

Isaac was about to make a comment when his and Erica’s buzzers went off simultaneously. The two friends stared at their wrists as the tension silently escalated. Only the beeping notification grounded them to reality, a dull reminder of what had to happen. Isaac slowly brought his eyes up to Erica, and he did not see Mason putting an arm around his shoulders.

“I think that’s our cue,” he said. His mouth was suddenly dry, and he felt his head spin as he stood up. “I- I- well. We’ll get going,” he said when everyone else stood up.

Erica and Isaac walked slowly to each other, and soon followed a long and emotional series of farewells and hugs, and a couple of sniffles and shoulder pats. Ms Reyes was the one who planted two loud kisses on Isaac’s cheeks, but said nothing.

Isaac left Mason for last. He had been uncharacteristically tactile with his foster brother that day, hoping that the contact could tell him more about how he really felt than the words that failed him. Thankfully the two of them had got to a point where they really knew what the other wanted to say, even if they would not say it aloud.

“Please don’t say it,” Isaac warned when Mason opened his mouth. “I’ve already heard a brother say that before – and I don’t want to hear it again.”

Mason rubbed his eye as he chuckled. “Just get out of here then before I say something stupid.”

Isaac pulled Mason in for a hug and they both barked a laugh. He then pressed a kiss to Mason’s head.

“Take care of Corey.”

“I will.”

The two brothers pulled apart, and Isaac walked away with Erica, disappearing into the crowd, heading towards the _Chimera_. When they eventually made it there, Derek and Braeden where waiting for them outside the airlock with Hayden.

“Ready?” Erica whispered, walking unnecessarily close to the engineer, but he did not seem to mind. Isaac just nodded and let out a breath he was not aware he had been holding.

“Isaac. Erica,” Derek called them. His face wore a hard expression that neither had seen before and that they could not read.

“Commander Hale,” Isaac smirked.

“It’s not just the colony that is counting on you today. It’s all the Solar System,” he said with rehearsed solemnity. “I am handing _you_ here your sealed orders,” Derek handed Isaac a datapad on which he and Braeden had pressed their thumbs. Without stating it, he had told him to keep it away from Hayden. “Once you are 3 degrees above the ecliptic you may open them and transmit your message.”

“Everything is detailed in there,” Braden said, with a softer tone. “Basically, you have to secure Oberon if you can, liaise through Lydia if possible with the Mars Council, and warn the Uranus colonies. You’ll then hand this datapad to your contact in the Oberon Council.”

Erica and Isaac nodded. Derek extended his hand formally, and they took turns to shake it. Braeden then did the same, and they moved aside to let them in.

“Be careful,” the Terran said, the only show of emotion he allowed himself. “We’ll do our best here, but we need you back.”

Isaac nodded sheepishly before disappearing into the airlock feeling a warm sense of validation inside. He knew that Derek really meant it – the colony needed him. They all wanted him back. They all wanted him to come back home.

**~ * ~**

“Isaac? We’re finally in our ecliptic position,” Erica said from the pilot’s chair.

“Copy that,” Isaac said and went off to type in the coded message for Jackson. They were sending it via one of the relays on Pluto and then relaying it again from Neptune, which would slightly delay the signal, but would give a first impression that it had not been sent from anywhere near Beacon H.

“Hayden!” Erica called, and from her tone, Isaac was still not sure about how she felt about the Lost Colonist. They had never been close friends, but Erica seemed willing to accept Hayden’s version of the story so far. But then again, she had originally infiltrated their colony with all the intention to sell them to the invaders.

Then the administrator walked onto the bridge, and Erica pulled again an unreadable face that worried Isaac – they needed to work together if they wanted to stop the invasion, and they had to live trapped together in a spaceship for the next eight or nine days.

“Okay, sent,” Isaac announced. “We can only wait now. Any reply we get we’ll get in some six or seven hours.”

“Okay, gather around kids. Isaac, read the secret orders, please?”

Isaac passed the datapad to Hayden and Erica so they could press their thumbs on it, and only then Isaac pressed his. Unsurprisingly, the datapad opened a document that detailed what Derek had outlined. It also gave Erica extraordinary command over the _Chimera_ , making her the highest-ranking officer. This applied only to him and her – Hayden was part of the civilian administration and, in their current circumstances, was outranked by her two traveling companions regardless. The orders also contained top secret documents and evidence to be presented to the Uranus and the Mars Councils, largely leaving them to contact the other planetary councils and to coordinate future actions. The last instructions were for them to stay put on Oberon and wait for further orders.

“Okay, lady and gentleman,” Erica said with a smug grin. “Sit back and relax. Next stop: the Uranian orbit.”

Isaac, however, left the bridge and went to one of the aft portholes, outside the rotating sections of the ship. Weightlessly floating in the largely empty low-gravity storage room, Isaac had one final look at Beacon H and saw the station that had been his home for such a long time become one more of the dimly-lit objects that peppered the Kuiper Belt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, boys and girls! Or happy equivalent celebration of the solstice! For the handful of people who have stuck to this odd sci-fi rarepair story, thank you so so much -- especially to Huayerixue and wickwackity for their incredible comments!
> 
> So, Isaac is now hunting Theo on a Lost Colonit ship having sent a coded message to Jackson BUT without being allowed to contact Brett... Any thoughts on that? 
> 
> Oh, and in case you're wonderng, half of Isaac's Uranian slang can be heard by here in South Wales, so be ready if you ever visit. The message, once decoded, should read "Hi Jackson, I’m fine but in big trouble/danger. A tholin ship is going your way from here with a spy called Theo. He’s bad news, you’ll hate him. Ideally you’d hold his ship. It’s a big danger. The usual comms are no good. If you’d follow him that’d be great. Also there’s the crewman called Brett. You could look for him and tell him [everything]. Stay safe. See you in a week and let me know you read this?"
> 
> Oh, and as I've been saying, this is the last chapter we will see through Isaac's POV and for the second half of the fic we're moving on to Brett (and I'm very excited about that). I have outlined most of the next chapters, but they're not ready yet, so it's going to be a while until I update this again (sorry!!). But I will not abandon this. On the side, however, I will be writing a few side stories about characters that I wished I had more time to explore (Mason, Corey, Nolan and Gabe, maybe Derek and Theo)... we'll see what the new year comes!


	18. Sunbound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brett is on the _Melissa_ travelling towards Mars, having left Isaac behind on Beacon H, and it it is all okay, until it isn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're off with the second half of the fic -- now from Brett's POV! I have the next five chapters written, and the first ten or so outlined, so I'll be able to keep up with weekly updates for a couple of months. Hopefully we'll be done by the summer.

**_A few days earlier_ **

Brett groaned into his pillow when he woke up to the annoying beep of an alarm – especially because this was not his usual alarm. There was usually little to do on board when they were travelling, so it was not extraordinary for the crew to have late nights, staying up watching holos, having a chat or, like last night, playing games. Of course, the concepts of ‘night’ and ‘sleeping hours’ in space were completely arbitrary, but ships, colonies and stations all worked on Earth standard time because humans had evolved on Earth with twenty-four hours circadian cycles.

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes and the AI slowly brightened the lights, in a weird artificial attempt at a natural sunrise. Brett was used to moving on from job to job, so he was always quick to make whatever accommodation he was given cosy and homely, even if simply because it was very unlikely he would ever settle back on Ceres. There were a few images of him and Lori, there were small trinkets and other mementos of past jobs, and now there were all the things that reminded him of Isaac. There was the framed picture of Earth and the Moon they had taken through his telescope, there was an untouched chocolate bar, there were the bottle of hooch and the jar of honey, and there was, of course, a holo of his boyfriend. Brett had got his computer to take a frame from one of his messages and make a still projection. He had chosen one of the moments when Isaac was being snarky, and had his head slightly cocked, his eyebrows half-arched, and his characteristic smirk which he loved so much.

He did not have much time to look at Isaac, because the AI insisted that he had to go and check some valves on deck 2. Apparently there had been a momentary drop in pressure. He eventually sighed and sat up, telling the AI to cancel the alarm and to set a reminder in one hour – he knew exactly what was wrong with deck 2, and he knew it could wait at least until he was done with his morning routine, even if it was earlier than usual this time.

The AI also informed him that he had received a message from Isaac.

Normally, Brett would have opened it immediately, because he could not get enough of him – even if they had to do with holomessages rather than instant comms. But this time he was afraid he was not going to see Isaac being his funny and snarky self. For the last three or four days, ever since it was certain that they were going to visit Oberon, Brett had been dying to know more about Isaac’s life there, but already on Beacon H his boyfriend had made it very difficult to extract any information about it. It had taken time and patience (and an unfortunate incident in a particularly narrow shaft on the _Melissa_ ), but he now knew that Isaac’s mother had died in an accident, that his brother was called Cam and that he had been an important part of his life but that he had gone. The fact that he had been in foster care in an outer colony and the evident silence about the topic told him that Isaac’s father had most likely been the source of his troubles. But it was Isaac’s brother that tickled his curiosity, especially considering the way Isaac had reacted when he had found out that he was from Ceres.

It had taken Brett a couple of days to make up his mind, and last night he had finally decided to ask his boyfriend about his brother. Brett knew it was a gamble, that Isaac could snap or, more likely, clam shut while avoiding eye contact and giving short answers. The Ceresian only wanted to be helpful and supportive, and Isaac may not like the idea that it may involve asking uncomfortable questions, but if Isaac’s brother had been on Ceres there were many chances that his friends might be able to help find him.

Now that he was fully awake, Brett did not linger any more in his cabin. He threw on some clothes and made his way to the exercise room.

The room was, unsurprisingly at that early hour, empty. Everyone onboard had a certain number of allocated compulsory slots, although Scott was not too harsh if people skipped one or two. Liam and Brett (and, now, Theo) were the only ones who used it more often than they were expected to, but the security officer normally went later in the afternoon. So once the mechanic got on the treadmill, he set his buzzer to display his boyfriend’s message. When it started playing, he began to jog.

“Hey, babe,” came Isaac’s voice, and his holographic projection looked nervously at him. Brett’s chest hurt inside whenever he saw Isaac vulnerable like that, and he immediately regretted even bringing the topic up. He should have waited until he was back. “I haven’t finished watching your message. I- erm… Well. My brother Cam,” he said and, after a pause, explained everything.

Unconsciously, Brett began to run faster as he listened to the story, holding tightly to the bars, making his knuckles go white. It was evident that Isaac missed his brother dearly and that he was hurt. He could not understand why Cam could have just disappeared from his brother’s life. Something big and bad must have happened; otherwise, he was not the kind of person -relative or not- who deserved Isaac’s tears.

After he finished talking, Isaac sent him a picture of his family, and Brett stopped. Isaac, Cam, their mother and their father were there, posing together under an arch that commemorated Oberon’s first orbit – which, if he remembered correctly, was the day of the accident. He sat down on the bench and had a gulp of water as he tapped his foot nervously.

When he stood up, he towelled the sweat off his forehead and typed a few commands on his buzzer, sent the image he had received to his computer, and continued with his jog.

Forty-five minutes later he was back in the showers, still thinking about what Isaac had told him. A few minutes later, he was back in his cabin on his computer, trying to process the image of Cam age sixteen with one of Isaac’s pictures, trying to recreate what his boyfriend’s older brother might look like now. The alarm beeped again and he picked up his tool kit, leaving the programme running. On his way down to the offending section of deck 2, he stopped by the dining area, where he grabbed a coffee and a protein bar.

_Earth! How I miss those peach pastries._

By the time he reached deck 2, the rest of the crew was already getting up. Brett was busy tightening one of the valves that hid behind the panels while Scott made his daily captain’s announcement.

“Good morning crew,” Scott said in his official radio voice, which Stiles always mocked him about. “This is Captain Scott McCall speaking; today is… Sunday, JD 2638774, and it is 7:30 standard. We are finally drifting away from Neptune and we are still on our way to the Uranus system. We are expected to dock at Oberon to restock water, which will be in seven days from now.”

This was followed by the noise of fingers tapping on a screen and the low mumble of Stiles and Allison talking to each other on the bridge.

“Also, morning status report: our oxygen levels remain constant to 92%, water down to 43%, all other systems operative, with only an incident on deck 2.”

Brett rolled his eyes before tapping on his buzzer.

“Captain McCall, this is Mr Talbot speaking,” he smiled as he imitated Scott’s commanding tone. “Deck 2 is being inspected and fixed as we speak; nothing major to report. Over.”

“Okay, okay,” Scott replied over the ship’s system, trying to stop himself from chuckling. “No notable incidents on deck 2 – I stand corrected. Otherwise, let me remind everyone that tonight we shall be playing _Explorers of Alpha Centauri_ again. Erm… so, that’s all. Have a great morning, Captain McCall out.”

By the time Brett had bashed the faulty valves back into place and made sure that they were not going to cause any more trouble again, the _Melissa_ was fully awake. He walked back to the dining area where Lydia and Malia were having a quiet breakfast. From what he could hear, Lydia had received some juicy news from Mars about their friend Tamora being promoted to Head Councillor of the Olympus region.

“Wait, Brett!” Malia called him before he walked away, and Brett turned around and put his hands on the door frame.

“Morning, you two,” he winked.

“You busy right now?”

“Maybe…?” Brett arched an eyebrow.

“You two need to finish cleaning that thing you called ‘dinner’ last night,” Lydia told both of them. “I’m sure there are bits on the ceiling still.”

“I’ll be back in ten,” Brett promised as he tapped the door frame. Last night’s dinner had not gone very well, to say the least.

“I’ll come find you if not!” Malia shouted once he was down the corridor.

“Don’t worry!” he promised.

Brett nipped back into his cabin for a second to check that his computer had finished generating Cam’s avatar and, deciding to make the best out of his next few minutes, he quickly fixed his hair and walked to the stern of the ship with an excited smile on his face. Once by one of the aft portholes, from where he could still see the blue ice giant, he placed his buzzer on the wall and began to record a message.

“Morning, Ise!” he said with his widest smile, the one that always grew on his face when he was sending a message to his boyfriend. “So, it’s day two since we left Neptune, and just in case you were wondering, it’s still as blue as always. Have a look!”

Brett explained what he had been up to last evening and in the morning, he showed him his current view of Neptune, and he even showed Isaac what he had reconstructed Cam to look like now. He asked if Isaac was still okay with him carrying out his enquiries. After ten minutes he still had things he wanted to say, but he chose to cut his message short before Malia came looking for him.

“So that’s it, I think. I better get going, because Malia needed me to help her scrap the burnt remains of dinner off the ceiling. I can’t wait to see your message, babe! Bye-bye!”

He stopped recording and sent it, looking out the port hole at Neptune and the dark vastness that extended behind the _Melissa_ , knowing that Beacon H was somewhere there, a tiny speck of reflected light in the Kuiper Belt, where Isaac was waiting for him.

**~ * ~**

The rest of the day was quiet enough. After the excitement of passing by Neptune, life on the _Melissa_ returned to its usual calm.

True to his word, Brett went first to see Malia. The previous evening’s dinner had been a great fiasco: it had been Brett’s turn to cook, but Malia had come across a Neptunian recipe that she wanted to try, and the mechanic was happy to help. After scouring the ship for enough vegetable paste and the few remaining fresh produce from Beacon H, the two friends gathered all the necessary ingredients. While the rest of the crew waited at the table and jeered and cheered in equal measure, something went horribly wrong, and vegetable purée flew everywhere while bits of ham were spread high and wide. In the end, they had to eat sandwiches.

Thankfully, nobody had minded too much. According to Stiles it had been quite a spectacle.

“I was about to go and find you,” the Martian woman said with a flat tone. Malia was usually abrupt and blunt, which had been surprising at first, but Brett had grown fond of her simple and straight forward approach to life.

“I promised I’d come!” he offered with a smile.

“I know, I know… Anyways,” she said as she gave him a scrubbing sponge. “You start with that corner. I’ll do the hob and the bot here can do the ceiling…”

Despite the robotic help, it took them the best part of a morning to remove all the grease and the pieces of food, which they found in the most unexpected places of the kitchen (normally burnt to a cinder and somehow molten to whatever surface they had landed on). Despite the circumstances, Brett liked spending time with Malia. They were very different people, and Malia was driven by a chaotic energy that Brett would have never been comfortable with for himself, but in a weird way they _worked_ nicely together, balancing each other, and they got along very well. All of Malia’s randomness fitted nicely with Brett’s calm adaptable approach, and rather than unnerve her, his view on things usually gave Malia a useful and valid point without anyone having to shove it in her face.

The fact that they had similar humours also helped – and, in a way, Malia’s unfiltered opinions reminded him of Isaac’s snarky sass. Whenever Malia was around him, Brett always had a smile on his face.

“How did we do this?” she said as she shifted a food processor to reveal a congealed and burnt pool of grease underneath.

“I think we are just deep cleaning other people’s muck,” he admitted, too busy scraping a pan. “It needed doing anyways.”

“I bet this didn’t happen with Isaac,” she said knowingly. Malia was the one who was most vocal with him about his boyfriend, perhaps because Isaac was friendliest with her.

“I haven’t seen him cook.”

“I’ve seen him work around this ship,” she said, as she scooped the offending liquid and dumped it into the robot’s recycling unit. “He keeps everything immaculate.”

Brett had not noticed that until Malia had pointed it out. He turned around and furrowed his brow as he tried to remember: whenever they had a pause, Isaac placed all his tools in the toolbox and cleared all the dust and debris away. It was not neat or organised, but it felt as if he felt that he needed to keep things tidy, even if all the impressions he got from him were that Isaac would not mind if things were a bit messier. The elephant in Isaac’s room that was his life on Oberon again seemed like the main suspect.

“Don’t get moody,” she said with sympathy. “You’ll see him soon enough.”

That drew a smile on Brett’s face, even if the length of ‘soon’ was debatable.

By the time the kitchen was squeaky clean and spotless it was lunch time, which meant that the crew slowly made their way to the kitchen to undo Brett and Malia’s hard work.

“If you leave as much as a crumb on this table,” Malia warned Stiles when he walked in, “I’ll make sure your stuff goes missing when we next stop.”

“Woah, easy there. When have I ever been messy eating?”

Malia did not bother to glare at Stiles; she looked past him with a cocked head and her arms on her hips, straight at Lydia. Brett saw this unfold as he typed a few last commands on the cleaning bot’s panel.

“We’ll keep this neat,” the commissioner said. Malia nodded once before leaving, patting Brett’s chest on her way out.

“Make sure they don’t mess this kitchen,” she whispered before walking out.

“I heard that!” Stiles said as he walked to the food processor and tried to get a packet from the top shelf, stretching his arm up. “Anyways, how’ve you been?” he asked him. “How’s my baby doing after your greasy boyfriend tinkered with her?”

Brett frowned at Stiles’ jab but decided not to take the bait. He just stood by Stiles’ side and, with effortless nonchalance, reached the top shelf and pulled two food packs. He kept one and lobbed the other one to Lydia. Stiles squinted at him, but Brett just smirked as he walked to the dining table.

“The ship’s alright, thank you very much. Isaac did an amazing job, and we are lucky he did.”

“Please ignore him,” Lydia apologised for her boyfriend, who had only just managed to bring down his lunch after stretching and standing on the tips of his toes. “You know we are best pleased with what you two did. How are you doing?” she asked, with more tact.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he admitted. “The ship’s doing all well. It’s just the comms lags that are annoying,” he added, obviously referring to Isaac.

“I can understand,” she said as she opened the pre-cooked food package. “Trying to call the family back on Mars is a nightmare.”

“Have you got much family there?” Brett asked. For all the time they had spent on the _Melissa_ together, he had not had that many chances to talk with Lydia. Normally there were many other people around, and in the few occasions they had been on their own, their respective families had never been the focus of the conversation.

“Just my mother. And Stiles’ dad, who is now dating my mother,” she said, opening her eyes wide as she stared into her food packet. “My dad moved to Io or Europa, or somewhere fancy like that with his newest girlfriend,” she did not hide her disgust.

“So your mom and his dad…?”

“Yes,” Stiles interrupted, planting a kiss on Lydia’s head as he sat down next to her along the bench. “I know, I _know_ – it is weird, and I told him, dad, she’s an amazing woman, but don’t you think it makes, like, _us_ —” he pointed at him and Lydia “—look bad? And he said, son, really, that’s none—”

“ _Stiles_ ,” Lydia cut him short.

“Yes, sorry. It is a long story, and I don’t think I want to know all the details. But what’s the problem with the comms?” Stiles suddenly and confusingly returned to a previous conversation point.

“Just the lag.”

“Yeah, sorry buddy, but there’s nothing I can do about it here. Not until we’re wired to a planetary relay.”

The mechanic snorted and thanked him.

The conversation slowly moved on, although with Stiles this was never smooth and there were many loops back to previous points. But Brett did not mind – he had grown used to Stiles’ unfocused ways, and he liked spending time with them anyways. Lydia was the most intelligent person Brett had ever met. She was Commissioner for the Kuiper Belt, but she could have been anything she had wanted. She was also very aware of the fact. Stiles was also very clever, but in a different way. Where Lydia was brilliant at analysis, Stiles explored every possible avenue before reaching a conclusion.

The mechanic looked at the couple have their lunch, and he had to wonder how those two ever got together. From what Malia and Scott had told him, Stiles had fallen hard for her very early on, and she took her sweet time to reciprocate his advances. The Martian and the Venusian were very different, that was true, but for some inexplicable reason they had ended up together, and it was impossible to deny that they loved each other, in their own special way.

Of course, that was none of Brett’s business. Brett just needed to know that they had welcomed him to their crew (their family), and he was happy for that.

A while later, Liam and Theo walked hand in hand in to get their lunch, soon followed by Scott and Allison. It was weird being on a ship where half of the crew was formed by couples (since Theo’s arrival, the balance that had existed on the _Melissa_ had broken), mostly because it was a constant reminder that Isaac was not there with him.

“Why are you frowning?” Allison asked as she sat down, noticing Brett’s brow.

“Oh, nothing…” he said, dismissively.

“He’s thinking about Isaac,” Liam, who had walked straight to the food processor while Theo sat down, said merrily without even looking.

Brett chuckled as he cleared his meal away, but he noticed how Scott still stiffened whenever Isaac was mentioned.

“Yeah, well, I had just finished, so don’t mind me…”

“Oh, Brett, wait,” the captain asked him. Scott was with Liam, getting his and Allison’s meals. “Could you come and see me on the bridge later?”

Brett turned around to answer. “Yes, sure. After I write my report?”

“Only if you’re not busy…”

“Scott, honestly, it’s fine,” he replied, and Scott relaxed.

“Great,” the captain said with his characteristic wide smile. Scott then briefly patted his shoulder. “Are you sure you’re not busy?”

“Yes, captain,” Brett chuckled. “I’ll see you later.”

He said his goodbyes and walked out of the kitchen area, down the corridor, until he reached the area where he had his workshop. His working quarters were nothing like those of Beacon H, since space was limited in a spaceship, but it was big enough for him to keep his tools and spares. He sat there, going through a routine check of all systems and writing down his daily report before filing it away. It was some unnecessary paperwork, in his opinion, but it had to be done.

Once he was ready, and knowing that Scott would only have a quick lunch, he walked straight to the bridge.

The more Brett thought about Scott, the more he understood Isaac’s crush. Scott was probably the best captain in the Solar System. He was definitely the best one he had met – and he had met a few in his lifetime. Scott naturally and effortlessly earned everyone’s trust; part of it was his charm and his strength of character, but he sincerely cared about everyone who joined his crew. He made an effort to know everyone he accepted into his family, and always made a point to listen. Even if he was the captain, he commanded the _Melissa_ in a way that he never had to impose his opinion or enforce his orders. In a way, he made reaching consensus and governing a spaceship seem easy. He was magnetic in a very emotional way, and he counted with everyone’s infallible loyalty. Brett was very lucky to be serving under him.

When he got to the bridge, he did so with all formality, knowing that Scott hated it.

“Captain McCall, sir? Ship mechanic Talbot requesting access to the bridge, sir.”

“Permission granted,” Scott rolled his eyes with a smile. “Come on in.”

Scott was sitting in his chair while Allison casually kept an eye on the control panel, since the trip between Neptune and Uranus was as easy as an interplanetary hop could get. Brett had known Allison before anyone else on the _Melissa_. In fact, it was because of her that he got his current job, because they had been living on Mars for a while and had coincided on previous ships. Of course, she was the rebellious daughter of the mighty Mars Argents who wanted to live her life before inevitably being forced to inherit the family business and he was the poor Ceresian mechanic trying to make a living where possible, but they shared a very professional approach to their trades, so it was easy for them to get along.

Despite this, Brett had some conflicted, mixed feelings about her: it was because of her that Isaac had had a tough time about Scott, but without her he would have never made it to the _Melissa_ or to Beacon H and Isaac.

Once Brett was standing by the captain’s chair, Scott stood up and pointed at one of his screens, with a new timetable, modifying their original schedule to allow for a handful of extra weeks to carry out the main repairs that Isaac had suggested. It all seemed good, but it would add almost one more month before he could be back with Isaac.

“It looks fine,” Brett concluded with a flat tone, his arms crossed over his chest. “Is this definitive?”

“It will be if you say so,” Scott offered.

“Yeah, yeah, sure. I’ll… I’ll make it work,” he replied with his brow slightly frowning. Brett nodded silently with his eyes lost on the screen and his mind thinking about his delayed return to Beacon H.

“Great,” Scott patted his shoulder as Brett walked away, biting his lip.

**~ * ~**

Brett marched back to his workshop with all the intention to hide for a while so he could study in more detail the new schedule of the _Melissa_. He had known that they would have to keep the _Melissa_ in the shipyard for a while, but he had not expected it to be such a long time. Brett also knew that Isaac knew that he would not be returning to the Outer Rim in a few weeks, but he was not sure if the extra wait was going to be fair on Isaac. Maybe he could fly back to Beacon H early and then re-enlist on the _Melissa_ when she came around? Scott could be convinced – especially if it was for a reasonable cause. He needed to think.

He was so busy thinking about this that he did not see Theo walking out of one of the rooms, and the two bumped into each other, falling over to the floor. Liam saw everything from the door, and did not look very impressed.

“Look where you’re walking, you unnecessarily tall asteroid!” Liam pushed Brett over and helped Theo get back on his feet.

“Gee, thanks,” Brett scowled. “But I’m not the one barging out of doors without looking.”

“It’s okay,” Theo said, shooing Liam away and extending his hand out to Brett. “Accidents happen.”

Isaac had been telling Brett about how he did not like Theo for a few weeks now. There was some irrational dislike towards the way he spoke, and there had been three other incidents where Isaac was convinced he had seen the _real_ Theo. There was the time when Theo had tried to de-escalate a fight and, unknowingly, triggered Isaac by invading his personal space when he was already on edge. That had ended up in a punch up. Then there had been a couple of times when Theo had been less than friendly with Hayden. Apparently, he was also hiding some sort of high-tech gizmo. None of that proved anything to Brett, but he knew that Isaac would not get so serious about something if he did not really believe there was something there.

So far, Brett was happy to accept that there was more to Theo than what he showed. If he was honest, Brett had to admit that he was just too nice all the time. But he guessed that Isaac’s distrust had to do more with his past experiences than with Theo in particular and that whatever Theo was hiding was nothing as evil as Isaac thought.

In any case, ever since he had boarded on the _Melissa_ , Theo and Liam had been inseparable. The ship had not been designed to be a leisure ship, and there were hardly any amenities for the passengers that only very rarely were ferried on the cargo ship, so that could explain why the two men spent all their time together. It was cute seeing them like that, holding hands, and joking around, although Theo’s favourite pastime was to tease Liam. From time to time, everyone on the ship found out when Theo had pushed it a bit too far, because of Liam’s angry shouts and the muffled sniggers of Theo echoing down the corridors, soon followed by stomping feet and cries of retribution. A couple of days ago Theo had been pouring salt into Liam’s drink whenever he was not looking until Liam eventually said that his lemonade was off. When everybody remained silent at his comment, Theo burst into laughter and he ended with the glass of salty lemonade poured all over him.

As Theo and Liam apologised, Brett also said he was sorry, and they both walked in different directions. The mechanic turned around one last time to look at Liam, who was painfully in love with Theo, and Brett’s face scrunched as he remembered Isaac’s warning – to keep an eye on Theo for Liam’s sake. Liam was his friend, perhaps the one he had forged the fastest friendship with on the _Melissa_. Even if Theo now occupied all the security officer’s time; he would not like to see him hurt because of a space scoundrel who wanted a free ride to the Inner Planets.

When he reached his workshop, Brett uploaded the new timetable on his semi-gel computer and then he pulled a planetary position calculator on his office screen. He highlighted Mars, Uranus and Beacon H, which sat on the far corner of the gridded screen. He also highlighted Ceres, in case he could pass by to ask Satomi about Isaac’s brother. He was deep in calculations when his buzzer beeped. A smile formed on his face when he saw who was sending the message.

“Hello, tholinhead!” a warm voice said before the holoprojector could form the face of a woman with light blonde hair, and blue eyes: his sister Lori, who was an administrator in one of the mega-colonies of Jupiter. “How have you been?” the holomessage continued. “And whereabout are you now? Earth, since you got that Icer boyfriend you have hardly called back. You better stop to say hello if you come round the Jovian System.”

Brett chuckled briefly. While he was on Beacon H, Brett had been sending Lori messages every day. She had become (like she had always been) his best confidant, the only person he could tell everything – and he had had many things to tell her about Isaac. As always, Lori’s advice had done nothing but confirm Brett’s instincts; that Isaac needed time and space and that they also knew what it was to have a difficult childhood.

“Anyways, seeing that you don’t know how to call, I decided to call you myself. Also, I have something important to tell you: I’m seeing someone!”

That made Brett’s eyebrows arch up in pleasant surprise. His sister had been so focused on her job during the last couple of years that she had not dated anyone since she broke up with her old girlfriend from Ceres. That, of course, had not stopped her from constantly teasing her brother about how she would make him an uncle before he ever settled for someone for good.

“He’s tall, he’s got brown hair and a bit of a square jaw. Bit of a meathead, but he’s funny; I like him,” she said, obviously looking for Brett’s approval, but he trusted his sister to choose well, and if this guy made her happy, then Brett was going to be happy as well. “Oh, he’s also got a brother. A twin. I think they’re from the Kuiper Belt – maybe they know your boyfriend? Which by the way, when am I going to meet him? I don’t know if there’s much to see in the back of beyond he lives in, but I can always do with a few days off…”

Brett listened to Lori’s message as he did mindless odd jobs that needed finishing with a big smile. This man she was dating was called Aiden, and was apparently a racer who contested in the main circuits of Jupiter and Saturn with his brother. Apparently they met when Aiden’s brother went to register them as residents on Ganymede II and there was a confusion when Aiden himself came in the following day not knowing who Lori was.

“Oh, and have you spoken to Satomi recently? She told me something about you asking for help, but she did not explain much. You better not be meddling in any funny business!” she warned with a mock stern look. “Anyways, just wanted to let you know that I miss you and love you and that I hope you can stop by soon. I can go and meet you on Europa if you stop there; we can go to that Venusian restaurant again?”

After that, Lori said goodbye and the holo faded until it disappeared.

Brett pushed himself back in his chair, his hands behind his head, thinking. He had a boyfriend. Lori had a boyfriend. They both had real jobs. He was travelling across the Solar System… They definitely had got far from that very empty and very small cabin on Ceres.

He was so lost in thought after Lori’s message that Scott’s second daily announcement startled him. He made a mental note to message back her sister when he noticed that there was an unseen notification on his buzzer. It was a text from Isaac, which was odd, because the comms lag made sending short messages more of a nuisance unless there was an emergency.

Brett bit his lip as he tapped on his screen.

 ** _ILAHEY:_** _Hey, babe, I’ve just seen you’ve sent me a holo but have no time to watch it right now. Something big is happening in the colony. I was right all along. These crews are full of shit and they’re up to something. Be careful around Theo. I’ll tell you everything later. xxx_

The mechanic stood still for a second after reading the message, and a cold shiver ran down his spine as his brain processed the message.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JD stands for Julian Day, which is an astronomical way of counting time. I thought it would be the kind of date that they would be uusing in space, when "days" and "months" and "years" make little sense. JD 2638774 = 13th of August, 2512!
> 
> And Lori made a quick appearance! She may be back later in the fic, but I'm not sure yet. But we need to know more about Brett's family, even if just to balance all the time I've spent on Isaac's!
> 
> Oh, and if anyone is on tumblr, I've been collecting images and posts that I think fit nicely with this story, and it should all be under the #RhysLahey's Green Hills of Earth tag.


	19. Unexpected news

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh, I see,” Scott said. “No, I don’t. That’s confusing.”  
> Brett sighed. “Isaac has told me something that I need to keep secret, I think. Something that affects the safety of the station.”  
> “Of Beacon H?”  
> “Yes. It also involves…” Brett looked around and then spoke in a lower voice. “It may involve Theo?”
> 
> OR: Bett's furstration while on the _Melissa_ grows as time passes and no news come from Beacon H.

The Ceresian re-read the message three or four times before locking up his workshop for the day and heading back to his cabin. What was Isaac talking about? The Saturnians or Plutonians, or wherever the Oort they were from were ‘up to something’? What exactly was happening on Beacon H? Brett wished Isaac had been more explicit in his message, because right now the only thing he could do was overthink and worry. He had to be careful around Theo? What could a captain away from his ship and his crew possibly do to him?

The door of his cabin slid shut behind him, and Brett furiously typed a message only to delete it immediately after. He tried a second message, but he also deleted it. What could he possibly ask? He needed so much information, and he was not going to get any reply in less than six hours.

Brett drank some water and closed his eyes, breathing in slowly as he repeated the mantra Satomi had taught him and Lori.

Breathe in. _Three things cannot be long hidden._ Breathe out. Breathe in. _The sun_. Breathe out. Breathe in. _The moon_. Breathe out. Breathe in. _The truth._ Breathe out.

He sat on his bed and quickly typed a message, which he deleted before even finishing it. Being rational, Brett knew that he would likely get an update from Isaac before he would get a reply to his message. There was nothing he could do other than wait, but for his own peace of mind, he needed to contact Isaac.

He still typed a new one.

**_BTALBOT:_ ** _OK, that’s very cryptic and alarming. I really hope you’re just exaggerating. Don’t do anything funny but please keep me updated. Don’t make me turn around and pull you out of another fight xx_

Brett read it a couple of times and sent it, letting out a breath he had not been aware that he had been holding. He fell back on his bed and put one of his hands under his shirt, scratching his stomach compulsively. He had not been this nervous in a very long while – and definitely never for a guy.

Then he realised the emotional significance of the fact: he had _never_ been this worried about anyone other than Lori and Satomi. He had had boyfriends before, but he had never been this involved with any of them. He had never invested so much emotionally in a relationship. And it was all because of Isaac.

They had first met on the _Melissa_ , when Allison brought him down into the bowels of the spaceship to assess the extent of the damage. Brett could remember it perfectly; both of them standing in the corridor. He introduced himself, Isaac took his hand and then he _looked_ at him – he did not give him the glance you give to someone you are meeting for the first time; Isaac looked at him with soft blue eyes and a slightly incredulous side-grin. His hands were harsh and his shoulders were wide from working, but there was something in his eyes that really caught his interest. And then he showed that he knew his way around a ship, and he was very good at his job, which Brett respected.

But then Isaac failed to come to the _Melissa_ for a few days, and Brett had to admit that it had been a bit of a disappointment. That was why, when he finally saw Isaac again (when he finally had an excuse to get to meet him better), he grabbed the chance. It was weird, Brett remembered, because Isaac did nothing but send him mixed signals. The Uranian was not subtle when he was looking at him, but he hardly said anything, but Brett was happy to play that game. They were in no hurry, and they were going to have many chances to chat (especially during their mid-morning breaks). Besides, something in his gut told him that he could not rush Isaac. The way he seemed on edge most times told him that. But then he found out that they both had a foster family, and Isaac gained a new and relatable depth that Brett wanted to explore.

Of course, by then Brett had already learnt that Isaac had a favourite song that his mother had taught him because he had always wanted to become a space explorer and wanted to go to Earth, and there was no way in which Isaac could have got any dorkier or any cuter.

They slowly got closer, and Isaac became more comfortable around him, which Brett really liked because he was already feeling like he was falling for the blond Uranian. The day he pranked him with the ceiling pipes Brett got to see that Isaac really liked him back, even if he was still not making any moves, so he asked him out. That had not gone as planned, but Brett did not want to press if Isaac needed time.

Based on the crew’s gossip (which was to say that Malia was very loud), it had something to do with Scott. Isaac was clearly not the talkative type, so there was little Brett could do other than wait and give him space while letting him know that he was there for him if Isaac needed him. Of course, the moment he mentioned Scott, even if he was trying to be helpful, it all backfired horribly. It was as if Isaac was trying to push him away, but Brett would not let him. For some obscure reason, he really cared about the Uranian, with his foster family, his dreams about becoming a space explorer, and his blue eyes. More than cared. He liked him. A lot. So much that he looked for Boyd and asked him for Isaac’s address, and went there with a box of chocolates with all the intention to make him _talk_. Not about Scott – about anything, because that boy was bottling everything up.

That also backfired.

Brett was very ready to give up on Isaac, even if it hurt him (and it better hurt him now than later). He was angry, because it felt as if he had done his best and that had still not been good enough for Isaac. And he really wanted to stay angry, but then Isaac turned up the following morning with a bag of pastries, looking like a kicked puppy and trying to apologise (and space, that boy could not really string two words together…). He would not show it, but Brett’s heart melted there and then.

When Isaac did not come to the _Melissa_ in the morning Brett felt bad, because he was very ready to accept his apology, and he panicked for a second, thinking that perhaps he had been too mean, but Boyd again helped him out and pointed him in the direction of the hydroponics bay. That became a day he would always remember, for all the good things they shared, and all the personal things they confided in each other. Also because it was the first time that Isaac let himself be comfortable around him. Brett knew that, after that morning, they could live together like that forever.

His gut feeling was confirmed when Isaac asked him on a date, and he went on to plan the best-ever date anyone could have planned out in the furthest reaches of the Kuiper Belt. Every single detail had been perfect, and Brett would not have changed that evening for anything else on Beacon H or elsewhere in the Solar System. Brett’s heart still ached remembering that evening, thinking about how he was impossibly in love with Isaac Lahey.

It had been difficult to say goodbye when the _Melissa_ had to go only a couple of days later. The departure had put a sudden end to their newly-found relationship. They did not need to make an effort to keep in touch now that they were apart because both needed to know about the other, even if the only reassurance and intimacy they got was through holos.

It was because all of this that Brett could not stand still, waiting for Isaac to explain what was going on even if he knew that there was nothing he could do other than to wait. He had to trust Isaac, which worried him and amused him in equal measure. If there was anything dodgy about those crews Derek and Braeden seemed capable and professional enough to deal with anything.

He sat up when his stomach rumbled, and he realised that he had missed dinner. He was going to be late for game night, even if he was not feeling like playing at all. He needed to discuss this with someone, and he needed to do it in person, because if he told Lori anything he would not hear back from her until the morning.

So Brett stood up and walked straight to the common room, hoping to find Scott.

**~ * ~**

“There you are!” Stiles yelled. He was sat at the table of the common room, adjusting the focus of the game’s projection. Allison and Scott were sitting next to him, discussing between them something while they pointed at their respective computers. “I mean, I never got the impression you were one to bail out, but you missed dinner, and I was worried you were not going to come, which is fine, we can play still, but I didn’t really know what was going on, and then I had to tell Lydia that maybe we could—”

“Scott, can I speak with you for a sec?” Brett interrupted, standing by the door frame without coming in.

There was a quiet pause as everyone eyed the tall mechanic standing right outside the room shifting uncomfortably on his feet.

“Yeah, sure,” the captain said slowly as he scooted along the bench to get out. Scott could tell from looking at Brett that this was not going to be a social occasion. “Let’s go to my cabin. You two can go on playing, we’ll be back in a bit,” he told Stiles and Allison.

When he reached the door, Scott put a hand on Brett’s shoulder and led him towards his cabin, while behind him Allison and Stiles talked in muted tones. They walked down the corridors with the reddish-orange horizontal band and then made a turn to the captain’s private quarters.

Brett had been there before, but he still felt intrigued by Scott’s cabin. He had a double bed, quite a luxury on spaceships, which he shared with Allison, even if the pilot had her own designated cabin. Scott also had a desk with a duplicate of the bridge’s control panel and a few decorations, including a model of the _Melissa_ and, to Brett’s constant surprise, a potted Martian fern.

“Take a seat,” Scott offered his chair while the captain himself remained standing. “Okay, so, erm… what did you want to talk about?” he said casually.

“Well…” Brett said slowly. “This is about Isaac.”

Scott immediately tensed. His eyes opened wide, his shoulders stiffened, and he began to fidget with his fingers.

“Wh- what about Isaac?”

Brett had to chuckle. “Scott, you don’t need to snap every time he is mentioned. Yes, he had a crush on you, but I’d like to believe he is over it.”

“It’s still very embarrassing,” the captain admitted moving until he was sat on his bed. “I mean, Lydia was telling me that he had been like that for years? How did I not notice? I- I- I could’ve—I mean, I might have… but if only—”

“Scott, don’t,” Brett managed to smile. “These things happen. It sucks, especially for Isaac. But it’s pointless now to worry about it.”

“I feel I should apologise,” Scott admitted, turning redder by the second, “but I don’t even know where to start! What could I say that does not make me sound like a tool?”

“Nobody thinks you’re a tool – especially not Isaac,” Brett tried to sound reassuring.

“Is this what you wanted to talk about?” Scott said, sitting up with a scrunched face.

“No, no. Not at all. I mean, this is… erm… it’s probably nothing? But it may be something.”

“Oh, I see,” Scott said. “No, I don’t. That’s confusing.”

Brett sighed. “Isaac has told me something that I need to keep secret, I think. Something that affects the safety of the station.”

“Of Beacon H?”

“Yes. It also involves…” Brett looked around and then spoke in a lower voice. “It _may_ involve Theo?”

“Okay, Brett, I think I need you to tell me from the very beginning,” Scott frowned as he leant forward, elbows on his knees. “What exactly are we talking about?”

Brett bit his lip, thinking for a second if he had been wrong about bringing this up to Scott. But he knew Scott, and he knew that the captain would know better what to do. So Brett tapped a few things on his wrist comm and forwarded Isaac’s message.

“That’s the message. It seems like nothing, but it appears that Theo and his crew have been lying about where they are from, and have been gathering on Beacon H for a few days – acting suspiciously, according to Isaac. And now he sends me this? Without any further explanation?” Brett scratched the back of his head as he leant forward, closer to Scott. “It could be anything, but of course there’s no way of confirming any time soon. I don’t know…”

Scott frowned again, but he remained silent for a few seconds as he read the message and pondered on what Brett had told him.

“It’s bit vague, isn’t it?” Scott said, arching an eyebrow.

“It makes more sense with all the things Isaac had been telling me before,” Brett explained. “The lying and the hiding, and the shifty behaviour. And now this?” he pointed at Scott’s buzzer. “I don’t know exactly what it could be, but it may be serious – especially if it somehow involves Theo.”

“Is this the kind of thing I should be contacting Beacon H directly about?”

“It’ll take hours before we hear back. The message will get there in the middle of the night.”

“What do you suggest we do?” the Martian offered. And that was the problem; Brett did not know what they could do. “He said he’d tell you more. Would it be worth waiting?”

“Maybe we can hold up contacting them?” Brett asked hopefully. “That’ll give him some time to reply. And I don’t want to cause an incident.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“But we’d need to keep it quiet,” Brett asked, almost as an afterthought. “Because whatever is happening, Isaac was quite secretive, and it may be nothing, and I don’t want to be embarrassing and—”

“Hey, hey,” Scott said with his best reassuring smile, interrupting Brett when he began to trip over his words. “That’s okay. I can do that. There _are_ some perks to being the captain, you know?” he offered with a wry smirk that somehow reminded Brett so much of Isaac.

“Thanks,” Brett replied briefly, sighing in relief. At least now he had a plan. “Thank you, Scott.”

“No worries,” Scott shifted until he was leaning closer to Brett, and patted his knee. “We are literally on the same ship. We’re all part of this crew, and I can really understand your worries. Not the least because of what you have shown me… But there is nothing we can do. I’d suggest you go and get some sleep.”

“I think I’ll need to grab a bite first,” he admitted as his stomach rumbled, even if the mere thought of food was making him sick.

“Shall I come with?” Scott offered as Brett stood up.

“I’ll be fine,” he sighed through a faint smile. “I’ll be fine, Scott.”

**~ * ~**

Brett hardly got any sleep. He spent his night tossing and turning, waiting for his buzzer to ping with Isaac’s reply, until it came.

A holomessage came through, and Brett opened it immediately when he saw it was from Isaac.

“Hey, handsome. I… well... this is difficult…” Brett saw Isaac biting his lip and scratching his elbow, and he could tell he was nervous – although he was himself also on the edge of his bed, waiting for an explanation. “Where should I start. Well, first of all, I hope that the message I sent you earlier did not scare you too much. Now, about the crews of these ships, we think they are trying to sabotage Beacon H…”

Isaac went on for a few more minutes about the infiltrated crews and their ships. He also gloated that he had said that this would happen, and Brett had to snort a chuckle, because that was such an Isaac thing to do. Isaac was also worried about Hayden, because she had somehow helped Josh and Tracy break into his workshop, looking for their encrypted emitter. Naturally, he also warned him about Theo, although Isaac was willing to give the captain of the _Chimera_ the benefit of the doubt, seeing that he had left Beacon H.

“I don’t think you need to tell Scott yet, but keep this in mind. We’re going to have another meeting later, trying to decide what’s going on with Hayden, and I’ll keep you updated. I’ll message you later. Don’t get too angry!”

Brett immediately sent a new text message, still trying to keep his cool about it, not wanting to pressure Isaac, even if this talk about sabotage was really riling him. Of course, any reply would arrive hours later, so he had little else to do other than wait and think. He gave up all hopes of getting some sleep, so he headed to the exercise room. Maybe a long run and some weights might at least tire him enough to get an exhausted hour’s worth of sleep.

When his alarm woke him up, Brett pulled himself out of bed and headed for the shower. He had fallen asleep eventually, but he had not bothered to take his exercising clothes off, which meant that he also had to change his beddings. The reflection on the mirror clearly reflected how he felt inside.

He let the warm water pour on him far longer than his allocated shower time, which would put a dent in his paycheck. But he did not care. He compulsively checked his buzzer, waiting for an update that would not come, and when Scott’s morning announcement blasted across the _Melissa_ , he decided to head down for breakfast.

“Rough night?” Malia asked with real concern when she saw him walk into the kitchen. “Here, have this. You seem to need this more than I do,” she handed him her freshly brewed coffee.

“Thanks,” he said, hoping his eyes could demonstrate the gratitude that his mouth could not reflect.

“What’s going on?” Allison asked when she walked in behind Brett.

“Nothing—”

“He’s had a rough night,” Malia said as she prepared another coffee. Brett tried to wave her worries away, but Allison knew that he and Scott had had a confidential chat the night before and that Scott had been moody later that evening.

“Sit down with us then,” the pilot offered with a helpful smile, gently guiding Brett to the benches around the table. “I’m sure you can have a lazy morning today.”

“Is this about Isaac?” Malia asked bluntly, but Brett saw Allison throwing daggers at her before he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll make you some toast,” she said.

The mechanic let himself be drawn to the table and get fed toast and more coffee. Allison and Malia sat at either side of him, not letting him go, and while they were talking and clearly including him in their winded conversation, they never commented on how he just sat there in silence, quietly listening while having his breakfast.

The two of them eventually pulled a smile out of him as they contrasted childhood stories from Mars, because apparently both of them had, for many years, gone to the same holiday resort without meeting. Brett guessed by the way Allison deliberately ignored the messages she clearly got from the bridge that they had decided to stay there with him.

By mid-morning, however, they could not keep it up anymore and Malia had to excuse herself because she had work to do. That left Allison and Brett alone in the kitchen.

“Whatever you told Scott be sure that he won’t let anyone get hurt. Not you, not Isaac.”

Brett chuckled as he stared at his empty mug. “I know.”

Brett spent the rest of the day busying himself as much as he could, typing up reports, fixing minor problems, doing inventory. He even rearranged and tidied up his workshop. But by dinner time he still had not heard back from Isaac. Almost an entire day had passed since the last holomessage, and Isaac had told him to wait for further news and not to bother Scott.

Unable to take this anymore, Brett went looking for the one person who could help him.

“Hey, my favourite Belter,” Stiles said, spinning in his chair. “You’ve been off today, buddy. I know you think little of me, but I’m very observant. I notice things. And you’re not your usual happy and tall assembly of muscles. So, how may I help?”

“Can you send a message for me?”

“For you, my friend, anything,” he said as he put his prehistoric earphones on and tapped on his screen. “Whom and where to?”

“Erm… Beacon H. Central comms.”

Stiles turned around slowly with an arched eyebrow and his lips forming a thin line.

“Is your buzzer broken?” he asked cautiously. “It does not speak well of a mechanic who cannot fix things…”

“Please?”

“Okay, okay. Do you want me to try your hunky boyfriend directly? I know his extension,” he added with a wink. “I have it saved somewhere.”

“If you could?” Brett asked hopefully, and Stiles waved at him, inviting Brett to sit down next to him.

“Okay, let me try. I’ll put in a direct request through the Neptune relay, which will be the quickest way, but it still won’t be instant comms. You better give me a message.”

“I just want to know if he’s okay,” Brett admitted, deflating as he did so. “I haven’t been able to contact him.”

Stiles shifted a bit uncomfortably at this. “I’m not good at this kind of things… I mean, nobody knows— _I_ don’t know—how I ended up with Lydia. And I’m possibly the worst person to ask for advice on this.”

“I just need the message, please.”

“You know he strikes me as the kind of person who’d just go quiet if he needs a moment.”

Brett turned to glare at him, his shoulders unconsciously stiffening in a way that not only showed how badly Brett had taken that comment, but also how big his shoulders were.

“ _Oort_ , easy there, boy. I didn’t mean anything by that!” Stiles was quick to apologise. “It’s just that people sometimes need time to think and to process stuff. He’s probably missing you very, very much.”

“Well, if you can get through to him or to Commander Hale, just tell them to message me, please? That’s all I need,” he sighed, sounding very tired as he stood up.

“I’ll do my best, buddy,” Stiles promised, making an effort to sound serious and reassuring.

Brett walked back towards his cabin, only to realise that he had missed lunch and that it was dangerously close to dinner time. Whatever had happened on Beacon H, Isaac should have contacted him already, unless something really bad had happened, in which case he had to tell Scott. Just for his peace of mind, he sent one more message to Isaac, short and direct this time.

**_BTALBOT:_ ** _Babe, I’m really worried now. Just let me know you’re ok x_

As the Ceresian walked into the kitchen, he was surprised to find Theo there, this time without Liam by his side.

“Hey.”

“Where’s Liam?” he asked brusquely. Whatever had happened (or was happening) on Beacon H, the only certain thing Brett knew was that Theo was not to be trusted, and he was not sure if, with Isaac in total radio silence, he was going to be able to mask what he felt.

“He had to work today,” Theo said with his usual smile. “I know I distract him too much, but sometimes he can be responsible like that. Hungry?” he said as he offered a plate of Jovian treats.

Brett sat down opposite him in silence. He pulled a crispy treat and took a crunchy bite.

“Are you okay?” Theo asked after a pause. “I haven’t seen much of you today and you are not looking your sharp self.”

“It’s probably nothing,” he offered, curling his toes in his boots to stop himself from shaking. “Just Isaac.”

“Oh?” Theo said, with concern. Brett, however, now properly understood what his boyfriend had meant when he had said that Theo tried too hard. Theo sounded concerned; his poise and his body language also showed his worry. But there was something in his eyes that had fooled him for a very long time. Not anymore.

“It’s just that I haven’t heard from him today.”

“We’ve left the Outer Rim far behind,” Theo offered, trying to put Brett at ease. “There’s the lag and there are always asteroids that cause interferences. He always was very busy too?”

“I know,” Brett sighed as he reclined back. All that was true, but Isaac’s prolonged silence was not normal – especially considering his last message. “I can’t help to worry, though? Wouldn’t you be if Liam went radio silent without any explanation, all of a sudden?”

“It would probably mean that I’m in deep trouble and I’d be better off staying away from him for a while,” Theo joked as he picked another treat from the plate. “But you haven’t done anything, have you?”

Brett almost missed it, because it was barely there for an instant, but something in Theo’s inflection sounded like a probe, as if Theo was trying to get information out of _him._ Brett had never been a good liar, and he thought he better pull out before things turned sour. Hopefully Theo would just think he was being moody.

“Of course, I haven’t,” he scoffed, standing up. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

With this, Brett stood up and walked out. The door slid shut behind him with a faint whoomph. He just walked back to his room.

**~ * ~**

That night he fell asleep out of pure exhaustion, but his sleep was restless and he woke up knackered.

“Hey, buddy,” Stiles said when he saw Brett in the kitchen, staring at his untouched breakfast. The mechanic only looked up and said nothing. “Okaaay, well, I’m sorry, but I don’t have good news.”

“Please, Stiles,” Brett sounded tired. “Just tell me.”

“Okay, first of all, remember that this is perfectly understandable and there are many good reasons why this has happened,” Stiles said waving his hands around for emphasis. “ _But_ , I have not heard back from Beacon H. So, this is good news, in fact. It’s not just Isaac, it’s his entire colony that has gone radio silent.”

Brett looked up, not really understanding. “And how is that good news?” he spat.

“It means it’s not something you’ve done—not that you would ever do anything!” Stiles was quick to rectify. “But this happens from time to time, especially with the Outer Rim. They have background Oort radiation, and thickets of asteroids,” Stiles weirdly and quickly waved his fingers in front of his head, as if that somehow clarified his explanation. “And they rely heavily on orbital relays that out in the Kuiper Belt can be hit by… well… more asteroids.”

“I am beginning to see how the problem _is_ an asteroid,” Brett snarled, rolling his eyes at Stiles.

“Hey!”

“Hey, Brett,” Scott said as he walked in, interrupting whatever fight was about to happen with his mere presence. “Any news?”

Brett dropped his spoon into his bowl of porridge, which had by now gone cold. “Yeah. Bad ones.”

The mechanic pushed his plate away and stood up with all the intention to walk away, but Scott stood in his way with his hands in front of him and his best questioning look on his face.

“How?” Scott asked Brett, but it was Stiles who answered.

“I told him not to worry! We’re not getting any signals from Beacon H at all. There must be a problem with the relay or something.”

“Have you tried all channels?” Scott asked.

“Have I? Have _I_?” Stiles was so offended by the suggestion that he could not string a sentence together. “I have tried every relay combination, but I still have to _wait_ for the message to get there and then come back to us.”

“Have you tried just broadcasting the message?” Scott suggested.

“Broadcasting,” Stiles rolled his eyes and threw his arms in the air while Brett looked at Scott with renewed interest. It was a weird idea. An out-of-the-box idea. But it may work and they might as well try. “Broadcasting! What are we? Back on Earth playing with the Arecibo telescope? Or- or- or have we just planted a flag on Mars?”

“Stiles…” Scott begged patiently.

“I mean, why would I not try a prehistoric communication system? Oh yeah, because it’s then transmitted to the entire galaxy, so everyone knows that Brett misses his boyfriend?”

“I wouldn’t mind telling everyone in the galaxy,” Brett turned his frown into a smug grin, only to infuriate Stiles.

“Of course you wouldn’t… But no, Captain McCall. I have not used open broadcasting. We are not the _Voyager 2_.”

“But you _could_ try,” Scott suggested with a smile.

Brett saw Stiles’s resolve crumbling with this suggestion, and he knew he would end up doing it. In all fairness, open broadcasting might have been an old-fashioned way of communicating by sending a non-directed message out into the ether, hoping someone at some point would get it. It was inefficient and signals accumulated background noise the further they travelled. But, theoretically, anyone in the Solar System (including anyone on Beacon H) with an open radio would hear their message.

“Alright,” Stiles growled. “I will do it. But _only_ because it is an amazing and nostalgic reminder of the early days of space exploration.”

“Thanks,” Brett offered a sincere smile.

“Yeah, yeah… any time, big boy,” the Venusian said as he waved them away and he returned all his attention to his breakfast. “Though if a guy named Isaac living on Mercury replies declaring his undying love to you, it’ll all be your fault.”

The day passed painfully slowly, much like the day before. Brett forced himself to eat something, even if he was not really hungry, and he spent most of his time in his workshop staring at his tools, and tapping his foot on the floor. When Scott made his evening announcement, Brett gave up and went straight to the bridge, looking for Stiles.

He approached the bridge and asked for permission to enter, but asked for it mechanically, looking straight at the corner where Stiles usually sat rather than at Scott. The comms operator stood up when he heard the mechanic’s voice, but he could only shrug and shake his head.

“Brett, wait,” Lydia, who was on the bridge with Scott and Stiles, called after him when he stormed out. “Wait, I said, please,” she insisted when he did not stop.

“I’m sorry Lydia, but I’m not in the mood for talking,” Brett huffed, his tone cold.

Lydia was about to say something, but Scott then came out of the bridge. “Stiles take over the bridge. We’ll be back in a minute.”

Brett heard Stiles complain, but he did as he was asked to.

“You understand that Stiles is right, don’t you? Communications, especially with the Outer Rim, are not always reliable,” Lydia said softly. “It’s probably nothing.”

Brett then looked directly at Scott and they had a silent conversation: true, it was probably nothing, but Isaac’s last message probably meant that something else was going on. Scott was asking him if they could share this with Lydia, but Brett was not sure if he wanted to. He knew he could trust Scott, but Lydia was a political officer and, as a Belter, Brett had learnt to distrust the Martian government. But she was Lydia. She was probably more loyal to the _Melissa_ and its crew than to her bosses back on Mars. Brett nodded ever so slightly, and Scott thanked him silently.

“Come on. Not here. Let’s go to my cabin,” the captain said.

With Scott leading the way and Lydia waiting behind him, Brett was given no other option but to follow until they were in the captain’s quarters again.

“What’s going on?” the redhead arched an unexpected eyebrow, but Scott was looking only at Brett, who simply nodded. “This is not just about Isaac, is it?”

“No.”

“You both understand that Stiles is right, don’t you? Communications, especially with the Outer Rim, are not always reliable,” Lydia warned.

“There is something else,” Scott admitted slowly, still waiting for Brett to confirm that he was okay with this. “We know that something might have happened on the station.”

Without looking at her, Brett handed Lydia his buzzer with Isaac’s last message highlighted, which she read while Scott summarised what Brett had explained about his boyfriend’s concerns and the industrial saboteurs.

“I see…” Lydia carefully sat on Scott’s bed and passed her hand through her hair and tucked it behind her ears as she thought. “I don’t want to dismiss your worries, but we need to be very sure before we decide to do anything about it. I’m sure that Braeden and Derek can deal with an aggressive industrial action like this. They’re not that rare out there.”

“I may just jump on the next glider back to the Outer Rim,” Brett suddenly decided. “It’ll be easier.”

“It won’t be easier,” Lydia tried to calm him down. “It won’t be quick, and it may be that in a few hours comms are up again. Interruptions like this are not usual, but they are not uncommon either.”

“Before you argue,” the captain put his hand up to stop Brett from interrupting, “we are only a couple of days from Oberon, where there will be a planetary relay and we can contact Ultima Thule or Makemake, and one of our contacts can find out.”

“This does not mean that Stiles won’t stop trying from here,” Lydia added.

Brett bit his lip while he bounced his knee nervously. He also fidgeted with his hands and raked his hair while he considered this option. Lydia and Scott waited in silence.

Eventually, Brett looked up. “Okay.”

**~ * ~**

There was a knock on his cabin door. Brett had made his way back to his room and had not been expecting anyone. Frankly, he wanted to be left alone, but his crewmates were not ones to let things be. So he stood up, straightened his pyjamas for a second, and opened the door, only to see Liam waiting outside.

“Hey, Brett,” the shorter man said. “I, erm… may I come in?”

Brett pondered for a second before replying.

“Yeah, sure,” he replied with a sigh. “Come on in.”

Liam was trying to smile, but his eyes told a different story, and Brett had to chuckle. He offered Liam a chair, which he took with a quiet ‘thanks’.

“You alright?” Brett asked, seeing that Liam did not know what to say.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Liam replied, again trying to sound cheerful, as if smiling was contagious and by being nice to Brett his worries would disappear. “How about you?”

Despite himself, Brett had to admit that Liam’s tactic worked.

“I’m a bit worried, Liam,” he understated. “I guess you’ve heard that there are no comms coming back from Beacon H?”

“Yeah, I know,” Liam’s smiley mask fell now that Brett admitted he was worried. “I know it’s nothing you have done, it’s the comms that are just not very reliable over there,” he repeated what he had heard Malia and Lydia say, expecting that the news coming from him would put Brett at more ease. “I like Isaac – he would not ghost you like that.”

Surprisingly, it also worked. Such was the power of Liam’s friendship. He could get angry, he could be stubborn, he could be slow sometimes; but it was undeniable that whenever someone earned his trust (which was not that easy – or so Brett used to think until Theo came along), he invested all his energies into cultivating the friendship. If that implied badgering Brett into believing that he was okay despite the circumstances, little would stand in his way. This, of course, meant that Liam was extremely easy to tease. But not that night.

“Thanks,” was Brett’s simple reply.

“For what?” Liam now beamed, happy that he had somehow been helpful.

“For coming to see me,” Brett’s smile grew wider, because he really meant it.

“That’s okay! What are friends for?” Liam clapped his hands, making Brett chuckle. “And I know Theo won’t come to say it, but I know he’s been worrying about you too.”

“Has he?” Brett’s smile froze.

“Yes,” Liam nodded. “He thinks I don’t notice and he’s not really one to talk much about these things. But I’ve seen him keeping an eye on you lately. Since the comms with Beacon H have been down,” he clarified.

“That’s good to know,” Brett said as he shook his head, while his head began to process this information.

“I mean, we all started dating at the same time. I don’t want to even think what it would be like if Theo suddenly disappeared…” Liam admitted, shifting uncomfortably.

“Well, whatever happens, you had my back, I’ll have yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So chapters 18 and 19 are basically an introduction to the second part of this fic, recapping the story from BRett¡s POV -- how did that work? 
> 
> Things speed up a notch in the next chapter, once the _Melissa_ reaches Oberon...


	20. New acquaintances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why would I answer to your demanding questions? And why were you waiting for me? I saw you earlier.”  
> The man looked around, suddenly aware that they were two people standing in the middle of what was otherwise a busy street, blocking the flow of people. They were beginning to draw attention. Brett saw him huffing, and then he pulled an Oberon Council badge.  
> “If you’re Brett, I need you to come with me. Now.”
> 
> OR: The _Melissa_ reaches Oberon, and Brett still has no news from Isaac. That is, until someone comes looking for him...

The day when the _Melissa_ approached the Uranus System came eventually, and still there had been no news from Isaac. None at all. Ever since Liam had visited him, Brett had spent most of his time compulsively working and tinkering with things around the ship or else in the exercise room, hoping to substitute sleep with passing out from exhaustion. He avoided having his meals with the rest of the crew, because if he had to answer again that he had not heard back from his boyfriend he might have snapped. Liam and Malia tried to approach him a couple of times, bringing him a sandwich or a soup, and Brett could only sigh and thank them before returning to his morose sulking.

As the ship manoeuvred around Miranda on their approach to Oberon, Brett had a chance to look out his porthole, from where he had an unobstructed view of the ice giant, its thin rings, and its blue-green glow. For the first time he noticed how the planet and its moons all rotated with their axis pointing towards the sun. It was a unique mystery, an unexplained wonder of the Solar System.

“Just like him,” Brett chuckled to himself.

Brett stood there watching, remembering all the things that Isaac had told him about Uranus and about Oberon. From the ice mines to the mighty deeds of one Captain Finstock – who, according to Isaac’s stories had achieved everything and was, quite probably, insane. On Ceres, or the Belt for that matter, they did not have a founding hero or daring stories of the colonial period, mostly because of the weird way in which private corporations had scrambled for the resources of the Belt treating colonists as nothing more than employees. Brett had wanted to see the Solar system because he was tired of the Belt, but Isaac had grown up with fantastic tales of exploration.

“Attention, please, attention,” a voice called through the ship’s announcement system. “This is Pilot Allison Argent. Approaching Oberon Orbital docks, please all hands on deck. Repeat: all hands on deck, action stations, action stations.”

Her announcement was followed by a series of loud beeps and Brett made his way back to his workshop. As he sat in front of his control panel checking for any problems, he heard the _Melissa_ groan as the ship slowed down to almost a halt while the side igniters thrusted the ship into synchronised orbit with the station. He heard the pneumatic pistons rearrange the hull and the station guides and the umbilical services connecting to the ship. There was a high-pitched beep when the orbital colony took control of the ship’s manoeuvre and then the dull hum of the quieting engines and the hiss of the dock securely locking into the airlock.

“Captain McCall to crew, we’re docked! Welcome to Oberon!” he announced with a big smile in his voice. Behind him, Brett could hear Allison and Stiles moving around and putting the ship in docked mode. “Remember you all have shore leave for two days. Please have your paperwork ready or else you’ll have to deal with Lydia. Oh, and Mr Talbot, please come and see me on the bridge? Captain McCall over.”

Brett did as he was told, and on his way to the bridge he saw Lydia checking everyone’s paperwork before they were allowed onto the station, but not before they walked through the de-contamination lock.

“Captain?” he saluted formally.

“Hey, Brett, come on in,” Scott invited him in with a big smile. He was the only one left on the bridge. “You okay?”

Brett shook his head, not even looking at Scott. “No news yet.”

“Well, we’re connected to the station relay now. Come find me and Stiles this afternoon and we’ll try it again, shall we?”

The mechanic nodded, but said nothing.

“Would you like to accompany me in the technical round?” the captain offered, and that drew a smile on Brett’s face. As the ship’s mechanic he was the one who had to do the technical round with the station engineer; it was Scott the one who did not have to do it.

“I’ll be delighted to join you.”

The two of them walked into the airlock, the captain checked them into the station’s system and, after a disinfecting whoosh of pressurised air and sprayed chemicals, they walked out to the dock, where an old woman in an engineer’s uniform waved at them. The woman introduced herself and made them sign some paperwork, but Brett did not pay much attention. Mainly, because that was roughly how he had met Isaac, and he did not want to think too much about it (and, at least this person was not wearing a blue and gold scarf). But mostly because there was a young man casually standing outside the dock, looking at him intently.

“Shall we check this beauty?” the engineer said, startling Brett from his staring contest with the other person. She spoke with Isaac’s familiar accent, but slightly thicker.

“Yes, sure. I’ll lead the way,” Brett said, turning his attention to the engineer.

As they walked back onto the _Melissa_ , Brett took one last glance out into the station, but the stalker was gone.

**~ * ~**

The round was quick, and the engineer did nothing but note all the stamps placed by Boyd and Isaac and comment on the report they had received from Beacon H. Scott and Brett thanked her for her time and, once they got the thumbs up from the Oberonian, they signed the paperwork and were free.

“Have you got any plans?” Scott asked as he tapped a few last commands for the ship’s AI.

“I was going to have a look,” he admitted. “Isaac has told me many things about his home colony.”

Scott scrunched his face and then put his hands on Brett’s shoulders.

“We’ll sort this out later today,” he promised, looking up. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

“Yeah, yeah…” Brett gave him a side smile. “Go take Allison for lunch. I’ll see you guys later.”

Scott looked at Brett straight in the eye once more to make sure his friend was going to be okay, but Brett rolled his eyes and shooed the captain away.

“Okay,” Scott grinned. “I’ll see you later then.”

The captain walked away into the station and, for the first time, Brett had a chance to observe the Oberon colony. The docking bays opened into a large elliptical hall, that was connected through a broad corridor with a central space presided by a large statue. Brett knew from Isaac’s stories that that was the orbital elevator, from where he could get to the colony hub, where the main sites were. He sighed briefly before stepping out of the dock with all the intention to go and see the sights, but he had only walked twenty steps when someone stood in his way.

He was probably his age, but shorter. Perhaps shorter than Scott, but not as short as Liam. He was clean shaven, and his cheeks and his jaw were so sharp that they seemed as if they had been chiselled. His hair was short and brown, and he had it combed over. His eyes were blue, but they were looking at him with suspicion.

He was the same person who had been eyeing him earlier.

“You’re Brett?” he said curtly.

Brett looked down and arched an eyebrow. “Who are you?”

“Are you Brett, the mechanic of that ship that just came from the Outer Rim?” he insisted.

That was all too suspicious, and Brett took a cautious step back. He had never got himself into trouble, but he could tell when something was off, and right now, none of that made sense. How did that man know his name? Brett noticed that he was wearing nondescript clothes, but they were _expensive_ nondescript clothes. They were in the middle of the day in a busy part of the colony, so it was not as if he was going to mug him. But that still did not explain why he knew his name.

“Why do you want to know?” he crossed his arms across his chest.

“It’s a fairly simple yes-or-no question,” the man insisted losing his patience. “And I haven’t got time for games.”

“Why would I answer to your demanding questions? And why were you waiting for me? I _saw_ you earlier.”

The man looked around, suddenly aware that they were two people standing in the middle of what was otherwise a busy street, blocking the flow of people. They were beginning to draw attention. Brett saw him huffing, and then he pulled an Oberon Council badge.

“If you’re Brett, I _need_ you to come with me. Now.”

Brett was now even more intrigued than alarmed. What did the Oberon Council want with him? He had literally never been there, and he had never done anything to draw this kind of attention. There had to be something important in all of this.

“Okay,” Brett eventually agreed. “I’ll come.”

“Good, quick. Follow me,” the man put his badge away and led him through the crowd.

His reluctant guide had no patience for anyone else on the streets that day – he barged through and glared at people, huffing and grunting whenever people walked too slow or would not move fast enough for his liking. He took them down the main corridor to the hall with the large statue of a man festooned with medals and holding a model of the Uranus system, and from there, down a side corridor that was accessible only through a code-secured door.

“Where are we going?” Brett asked before crossing the threshold.

“Not here,” the man said as he looked around.

“Will you tell me what’s going on?” Brett insisted, planting himself firmly and refusing to walk any further. “If this is official colony business, I expect something other than a dodgy service corridor. My curiosity has a limit, and I am sure I can request my captain to be present if I have done something wrong. You haven’t even told me your name.”

The man clenched his jaw and Brett saw how his patience was wearing thin, but behind it there was something else. It might have been fear.

“My name is Jackson Whittemore,” the man finally introduced himself. “I’m a member of the Colony Council and you and I have a friend in common,” he admitted, still giving side glances behind Brett. “Now can you please come in?”

Brett froze where he stood. He had heard that name before – Isaac had mentioned it when they were in the hydroponics bay. Jackson had been the friend who had smuggled Isaac onto the colony ship that took him to the Kuiper Belt. Considering their current circumstances it was unlikely that this meeting was purely casual.

“You know—”

“Yes,” Jackson interrupted. “Not here. Come in,” he instructed, nodding with his head. Brett took a second’s pause to consider his options, but if Jackson knew anything about Isaac, he was going to follow him.

Brett assented, and Jackson sighed. He opened the door again and led them down a corridor, leaving the busy colony behind.

**~ * ~**

Inside an isolated room brightly illuminated by a couple of the ring-shaped lights that seemed to be everywhere on Oberon, Jackson typed a few commands for the room’s AI until the door behind them shut and locked.

“What is this place?” Brett asked, looking around the room. Jackson had taken them to what looked like a main building, but around the back way. He then had taken him down a flight of steps to a basement level, where he opened the room. Inside there were a few desks and chairs, and projecting equipment.

“This is the archives’ seminar room,” Jackson explained as he pulled a chair and sat down. He did not offer one to Brett, but did not stop him from sitting either. “It’s out of the way and it can be soundproofed.”

“And what about Isaac?” Brett remained standing. “Do you know what’s happened to him? Has he spoken with you?”

“How did you meet Isaac?” Jackson asked in turn, keeping his cards close to his chest.

“What?”

“I said, how did you meet him?” Jackson asked again, leaning forward in his chair. “It’s a simple enough question.”

“He came onto my ship to do some repairs,” Brett answered, frowning. “He’s the station engineer, I’m the ship’s mechanic.”

“What did you eat during your breaks?” Jackson spat the next question almost immediately.

“Chocolate and juice? What has this got to do with anything?”

“ _Out ride the sons of Terra, far drives the thundering jet_ ,” Jackson recited, leaving the verse unfinished.

“Really?” but Jackson would not say it again. “Hmmm… _Up leaps the race of Earthmen, out, far, and onward yet_? Are we done with your games and are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

Jackson’s face seemed to soften when Brett sang the two other lines of that stanza. Ever since Isaac had given him that recording of his favourite song, he had listened to it almost every single day.

There was a tense pause while Brett and Jackson stared at each other, before Jackson spoke.

“Isaac is okay,” he explained, and a wave of relief washed through Brett, easing the accumulated tension, and making him suddenly weak in the knees – so much that he had to sit down.

“How do you know? Wh- when did he—?”

“He has been sending me messages,” Jackson explained, scrunching his face and pinching the bridge of his nose. “He sent me a first weird message in the code we used when we were little—which is the only reason I know it was _him_.”

Brett snorted, because that suddenly seemed like a thing Isaac would have done.

“What did he say? Why hasn’t he contacted _me_?”

Jackson put his hands up to stop Brett from asking more questions, asking for time to explain.

“Something has happened on Beacon H. There was some sort of attack on the colony and they cannot contact anyone because they could expose the fact that they foiled the attack.”

“What?” that did not make any sense. “The saboteurs actually attacked?”

“You knew about the saboteurs?” he asked, and Brett just nodded dismissively. “Well, it’s difficult to believe and trust me, it’s even more difficult to transmit this kind of information in a childish code.”

“How did they contact you then? And why you?”

“There’s apparently someone on your ship—”

“ _Theo_.”

“Him,” Jackson agreed seriously. “He and his collaborators must be tapping transmissions somehow. The only way I got his messages was because they were being relayed from different stations and through an open civilian channel, I imagine.”

“Hang on,” Brett interrupted Jackson as he slowly pieced this information with Isaac’s last message. “Isaac told me about saboteurs, but he never explained further. But are you sure this is why they’ve gone radio silent?” Jackson nodded. “But if they’ve stopped whatever attack they were planning on Beacon H why do they still have to keep their comms down? What else is happening? This does not sound like industrial sabotage.”

“Do you trust Isaac?”

“Yes,” Brett said, slightly offended.

“Good. Because that’s the only reason why I believe what he’s telling me.”

“I’m listening.”

Jackson clenched his jaw for a second before explaining. “Whatever these invaders were trying, their plan goes beyond the Outer Rim. It somehow involves the inner systems too. Theo is the key for whatever this attack is.”

The two fell silent for a second, Jackson trying to judge Brett’s reaction.

“It was the Saturnians,” he explained.

“The who?”

Brett clicked his fingers and closed his eyes, trying to string his thoughts into coherent speech. “Theo and his crew, and the other crews—they lied about where they were from. Isaac assumed they were from Saturn, but apparently they were not. They were not from wherever in the Kuiper Belt they said they were either. They were lying all the time, and they had help from the inside.”

“The infiltrators?”

“I guess?” Brett shrugged his shoulders. “That’s the only connection between them and Theo. Isaac was very insistent on this.”

“Good,” Jackson smirked, surprising Brett. “Because the only thing Isaac has asked me to do is to hold Theo here for as long as we can. He’ll explain everything then.”

“That’s the plan?”

“Yes, we’re meant to hold you on Oberon until they arrive.”

“Isaac is coming _here_?” Brett’s heart skipped a beat in a flurry of emotions. “When?”

“In a week.”

“He’s leaving in a week?!”

“No; he’s _arriving_ in a week.”

“That’s impossible,” Brett shook his head. “He can’t be here in a week. Ten days ago he was still on Beacon H. I spoke with him then. It’s impossible; he can’t be here that quickly.”

“That’s what I thought, but he insists that a week is correct. That’s all I can say,” Jackson insisted. “Apparently they have a new ship?”

“A new sh—those new ships?”

“You speak as if that makes any sense to me,” Jackson deadpanned.

“These crews, these Saturnians, Theo. They all docked on Beacon H in brand-new ships,” Brett remembered. But then something else stroke him. “And you said ‘they’? Who else is coming?”

“He’s coming with two friends, apparently while they evacuate the rest of the colony.”

Brett’s jaw dropped, because if the new ships made some sort of sense (although the fact that they could travel 40 AUs in under two weeks was far-fetched), evacuating the colony was unbelievable.

“They are evacuating the colony?”

“They’re afraid of more attacks,” now Brett saw that Jackson did not have all the answers and that he was also having a difficult time both believing what Isaac had transmitted and processing the implications of what he was saying: that there was some form of upcoming organised revolution across the Solar System with infiltrators trying to usurp colonies and stations.

“But is he okay?” Brett asked again, ignoring for a second the wider issue. “Did he tell you what happened during the attack? Is he hurt?”

Jackson snorted as he shook his head.

“I like you,” was his simple reply. “He did not elaborate, but he did say he was tidy.”

“Tidy?”

“You need to learn some Icer slang,” Jackson gave him a side smirk, and Bret chuckled as he nodded fondly.

There was a pause, during which both men hung their heads low. Lost in thought.

“How big is this?” Brett asked eventually, looking directly at Jackson with a worried face.

“Sounds pretty big,” Jackson replied with a sigh, and Brett would not have been surprised if these revelations had been keeping him awake at nights. “If there are secret infiltrated spies in other colonies and they have to evacuate Beacon H to keep the secret, then it is probably massive.”

“And we just have to arrest Theo?”

“No,” Jackson clarified. “He said nothing about arresting, Isaac only told me to keep your ship docked until they arrive and to retrieve something he’s keeping. He also told me exactly whom I could tell this.”

“Why are you telling me then?”

“Because, and I quote, he says he misses you and he’s sorry he’s not contacted you yet.”

Brett felt a lump in his throat and a warm feeling in his chest. He had to clear his throat before asking his next question.

“And whom else are you sharing this information with?”

**~ * ~**

Brett and Jackson waited outside the building they had been in, which was apparently some sort of museum or library. Under normal circumstances, Brett would have grilled Jackson with questions about Isaac because he was his only true childhood friend, and he would have been able to tell him oh so many things. But learning that his boyfriend had to flee a covered operation to take over his colony and that he had been sharing his dinners with a dangerous spy who was dating his friend under false pretence only to get a camouflaged free ride into the inner systems sort of dampened his mood for talking.

The one thing Brett was certain about was that, even if ‘spy trying to take over the colony’ was not specified on the cards, Isaac was not going to shut up about how he had been ‘right’ all along. Brett could not wait to see him and kiss his smug grinning face.

“Where to are they?” Jackson said in his odd Icer way, tapping his foot against the wall he was leaning on, hands firmly in his pockets.

Brett checked his buzzer, but there were no new messages.

“Coming, I guess?”

Jackson rolled his eyes.

“There they are,” suddenly Brett pointed with his chin, and Jackson stood up properly.

Coming towards them were Captain Scott McCall and Mars Commissioner for the Kuiper Belt Lydia Martin, the former looking concerned, the latter mostly unimpressed. Once they were close enough, Brett made the necessary introductions, noticing how Jackson gave Lydia an extra fond smile, and although Lydia did not return it, she lingered for a fraction of a second longer than necessary shaking his hand, as if acknowledging that in another life something might have happened between them.

“What’s all this about, Brett?” Scott wanted to know.

“Not here,” Jackson took the lead. “Please, follow him – I’ll be down now in a minute.”

Brett took Scott and Lydia into the museum building. Scott asked if they knew if Jackson was going to come with them now or in a minute, but Brett, who having heard Isaac say similar weird expressions was now the _Melissa_ ’s expert on all things Uranian, explained that Jackson would be with them shortly.

They reached the basement seminar room where, after making sure that there was nobody around, Lydia poked Brett with her finger, whisper-shouting her question.

“You better have a good explanation for all this secrecy,” she demanded. “If he’s a member of the council then this is not the kind of place to conduct public business. And if it is not public business then I do not know what I am doing here.”

“Yes, Brett,” Scott sided with his friend. “This is most irregular, and I hope you understand that I’m not best pleased with leaving Allison alone in the restaurant. I trust you,” the captain reassured him, “but this is unsettling.”

“Hey,” Jackson scared them appearing from behind some stacks. He clearly had come down a different way, which did nothing to put Scott or Lydia at ease. “Sorry for this, but these are necessary precautions,” he informed them as he opened the door. He looked at Brett and the Ceresian walked in, soon followed by Scott and Lydia.

“Okay,” the Uranian said once he secured the room one more time. “I, erm… well. I’m an old friend of Isaac’s, and I have news from Beacon H.”

Scott and Lydia looked at Jackson with curiosity and expectation. Scott glanced at Brett, who was very serious and who only nodded, agreeing with Jackson.

Fifteen minutes later, Jackson had exposed the facts as he knew them, based on Isaac’s coded messages and the insight that Brett shared from Isaac’s observations. Scott and Lydia paid careful attention, even when the explanations bordered on the fantastic and the unlikely. Brett could not guess from their faces if they were believing everything or if their scepticism was gaining the upper hand. Scott, of course, had already heard part of it.

“The only thing Isaac has asked from me is to keep you docked until he arrives in a week’s time,” the councilman concluded. “There is also some sort of gizmo we need to retrieve, although I guess we can’t do it yet, or else Theo will find out.”

“Makes sense,” Scott nodded. “How do you plan to keep us grounded?”

“The simplest thing is going to be mechanical issues,” he proposed. “A leak, a shorting circuit, or a faulty emitter.”

“The ship was completely repaired out there in the Kuiper Belt,” Lydia told Jackson. “I don’t know if that will work.”

“That won’t keep us grounded for a week,” Brett pointed out. He knew there was so much mechanical bluffing he could do without actually making things worse with the ship.

“We’re due to leave in forty-eight hours,” Scott reminded them. “That may buy us two extra days. We need something to drag this for at least three more.”

The four fell silent in the seminar room, trying to think of ways in which to justify grounding the _Melissa_ for a week.

“I’m sure we’ll think of something,” Jackson was the first one to get bored of thinking. “That still leaves the device, though.”

“What exactly is it?” Lydia wanted to know. “Is it something he would be carrying around? Or is it something bigger?”

“Isaac mentioned once that Theo had a small portable gizmo,” Brett remembered his boyfriend listing the many things he found suspicious in Theo.

“I… I don’t think it’s that,” Jackson frowned, slightly confused. “Isaac said that it would be a very advanced Argent radio.”

Lydia’s face changed when he heard this last thing, and she instinctively searched Scott’s hand with hers, giving him a gentle squeeze when she found it.

“What about an Argent radio?” she asked pointedly, and Brett saw how the colour drained from Scott’s face. “Is there anything in what Isaac has told you about Argent Industries?”

Jackson was not aware of the implications of this question, but Brett could easily put the pieces together. If these secret infiltrators were planning some large-scale industrial take over, and they were using Argent equipment, there was room to doubt Allison’s involvement in all this. After all, she had joined the _Melissa_ roughly in the same way Theo had.

“Lydia?” Scott asked.

“What’s wrong with Argent Industries?” Jackson noticed how this was suddenly a key issue. “It’s difficult to clarify minor points in this code we use,” he excused his friend when nobody answered his question, “but the Argent name is somehow linked to what happened on Beacon H.”

“You never told me that?” Brett demanded.

“I didn’t think the make of a radio would be that important!” Jackson hissed. “And now evidently you know something I don’t.”

“Scott, don’t go there,” Brett ignored Jackson’s question when he saw Scott’s hands trembling, despite Lydia’s grip.

“Go where?” Jackson leant forward, finger pointing. “What are you on about?”

Lydia squeezed Scott’s hand, knowing that her friend would have made the same connection. “We have no evidence to prove that...”

“Allison…?” was all Scott could say.

“Who’s Allison?” Jackson insisted.

“Allison Argent,” Brett explained. “She’s our pilot.”

“She’s my _partner_ ,” Scott muttered, his face a blank mask, even if behind his eyes Brett could see a storm of thoughts brewing.

Jackson immediately understood.

“She’s not—”

“Scott,” Lydia tried to calm him down.

“She’s not part of that!” the captain insisted as a vein pulsed on his neck. “She’s not an infiltrated agent.”

“Okay, okay, everyone calm down,” Brett tried to intervene, although he was not sure if he was going to be able to handle it. “Isaac has only mentioned Theo. Theo is the only one we need to stop.”

“He also insisted on me not telling anyone else,” Jackson did not help. “He said we could only trust the people in this room.”

“Allison is not a spy,” Scott denied the implied accusation, even if he had reached the same conclusion himself.

“Nobody is saying she is,” Brett said.

“Not so fast,” Jackson warned. “We don’t know who else is collaborating or infiltrating. I would not rule out people so quickly, no matter how close.”

Brett wanted to argue, but he knew that Jackson was right – to a degree.

“Allison is my best friend,” Lydia argued, trying to stop Scott from nose-diving into darker thoughts. “You know she is. I’ve known her for years. That’s why I recommended her for the _Melissa_ ,” she explained. “There’s no evidence—”

“Allison quitted Argent Industries,” Scott reminded them, turning around to look Lydia in the eye but mostly trying to convince himself. “She had a massive argument with her mother. She- she- she’s also _my_ best friend.”

“We all know that too,” Lydia tried to appease Scott, whose eyes were already pooling with water.

“Nevertheless—” Jackson said in an icy tone.

“No,” Brett interrupted. “There’s no ‘never-the-less’. Isaac only named Theo. All of _this_?” Brett made a circle with his finger. “All of this is about him, not about Allison.”

“We haven’t got any evidence against her,” Lydia added, only to make Jackson huff.

“That’s the problem with infiltrated spies. Gaining your trust is their only objective!”

“Okay, enough of this,” Scott growled as he stood up. Even with reddened eyes and his hand still in Lydia’s, the captain commanded authority, and they all stopped their arguing. “None of us would believe that Allison is a spy, but- but we cannot rule it out.” Brett saw Scott swallowing hard, trying to convince himself about that. “We must trust Isaac, who only asked us to not tell anyone else. That includes Allison, but also Stiles, Malia and Liam. There’s no harm in that.”

There was a pause as Scott let this set. Brett had time to realise that they would have to have a word with Liam eventually, and that was not going to be a pleasant conversation.

“Then again, we haven’t got any evidence that any of our friends is a spy.” That was also true, and even if Jackson could have argued, Scott’s glare kept him from speaking.

“I’m happy to believe this from Theo,” Lydia agreed, even if until then Brett had not noticed any mistrust between them. “We have solid evidence and an accusation against him. There is nothing against Allison, Scott. Or against the rest, for that matter.”

“I can see why you would want to trust your crew, even if one of them is the actual ringleader of whatever is going on,” Jackson admitted.

“Theo is not a member of the crew,” Brett underlined, and that seemed to settle the argument with Lydia and Scott: Theo was an outsider – they could trust the crew of the _Melissa_.

“We will not talk about this to anyone else,” Scott decided.

“We just need to keep our wits about us,” Brett concluded. “Keep a straight face and go on with our daily routine.”

“That’s going to be all good and fine,” Jackson sighed. Despite the tense argument they had agreed to follow Isaac’s plan, which was all he needed the crew of the _Melissa_ to do. “But how good are you at acting that everything is okay?”

Brett and Scott looked at each other with slight embarrassment, but Lydia just rolled her eyes. Perhaps the plan was straightforward enough, but it was not going to be easy.

**~ * ~**

Jackson led them away from their meeting room through more hidden service corridors until they emerged near the space elevator hall, which was buzzing with activity.

“Do you two mind going ahead?” Brett asked, biting his lip.

“Yeah, sure,” Scott was a bit shocked, but Lydia linked her arm in his and pulled him away.

“We’ll see you back on the ship,” she said with a short nod.

When they both had walked away, Brett turned around to look at Jackson, who had guessed this had something to do with him.

“What do you want?”

“I need a favour,” he said in a low voice. “You’ve been receiving Isaac’s messages, but have you been in contact with him?”

Jackson did not reply, because he guessed where the mechanic was going. Brett saw the shorter man scrutinise him carefully before answering.

“It can only be a short one, and it can’t be too complex,” he warned, but Brett simply smiled widely and nodded a couple of times. “Come on then. We’ll do it from home.”

The shorter man led them through the crowded corridors of Oberon towards one of the residential domes.

“How is he doing?” Jackson asked casually, but Brett noticed that he was keeping his eyes peeled. “To be fair we don’t write that often. Not anymore.”

“He’s busy…” Brett replied lamely. “But he really likes his job, I think. He likes being an engineer. He also keeps bees,” he said the first random fact he could think of, and that made Jackson snort. 

“We were all trained to be miners,” Jackson said as they took a turn towards a separate section of the colony. But before they did so Brett craned his head and managed to get a glimpse of the colony hub. “Not that we wanted to be miners, of course: space explorers – that was our dream. But on Oberon it is all about the mines or the comms. His dad is still a miner, so I never guessed Isaac would end up doing anything else.”

Brett was suddenly very tempted to ask about Isaac’s father, whom Jackson had mentioned so lightly. He had his suspicions, but maybe he could get some straight answers from Jackson.

“What have bees got to do with engineering?” Jackson turned to look at him, and Brett missed his chance to ask.

“I think beekeeping is more something he does on the side in the hydroponics bay.”

“We haven’t got hydroponics here. They’re all in satellite stations,” Jackson said casually. “But is he happy, though?”

Other than his initial suspicion, that had been Jackson’s first clear demonstration of what he felt for Isaac. Even years after and thousands of kilometres apart, he still cared.

“I think he is,” Brett said confidently. They were now in a much less crowded part of the colony. The residential quarter here was more similar to the ones he knew from Ceres and the Belt, with stacked buildings inside a dome that, because of the station’s position, currently looked down at the ice giant. “I guess there are always ups and downs, but I think he is.”

“Thank you then,” Jackson turned around to face him for the first time. “I’m sure it’s partly because of you.”

Brett was about to say something, but Jackson flicked a card in front of a door, and the pod opened with a whoosh.

“Come on in.”

Jackson’s cabin was spacious for orbital colonies’ standards. There was an oval hall that opened on to a living room that was built against the wall of the dome, so there were portholes looking out. A kitchen occupied a corner of the main room, and a corridor led to the private areas of the cabin, which Brett did not get to see.

“I guess you want to send him a message?” his host arched an eyebrow.

“Just tell him he’s an idiot and he better be here soon.”

Jackson stared at Brett for a quick second. Then a smile grew on his face.

“Definitely like you,” he said as he typed and coded the message. “Anything else?”

“Tell him also that whatever happens, he’s the one who has to tell Liam.”

“Who’s Liam?”

“Oh, a crewman on the _Melissa_. He’ll understand…”

Jackson nodded silently as he finished putting the message together and sending it.

“Well, I guess we’ll get a reply tomorrow. Shall I come and find you?”

“Thanks,” Brett said, really meaning it. “It’s been a bit difficult these days… you know?”

“I can imagine...” Jackson whistled as he rolled his computer away. “It’ll all be fine soon though. You got any plans for today?” he asked, standing up.

“I think I’ll do some sightseeing,” the mechanic guessed. “Isaac told me a few things about this place.”

“Did he now?” Jackson arched an eyebrow, and Brett could have promised he seemed taken aback.

“Well… He mentioned you, though.”

“Yeah, well… we go back a long while.” Jackson admitted, but Brett could see that he was not happy talking about that.

“He only mentioned a couple of other things, but it seemed as if he had very conflicted memories of this place.”

“That would be putting it mildly… I’m sure he’s not happy to talk about this place,” Jackson also sounded reticent, but Brett needed to probe a bit more – he needed to know.

“I mean, he told me about the accident during the orbit, and how you smuggled him on the colony ship. You saved him.”

Jackson hung his head as he rubbed his fingers through the back of his neck.

“After his brother left?” Brett added, and Jackson looked up. “Yeah, he told me.” A pause. “I’m sure that you getting him on that ship saved him.”

Brett could see many different feelings going through Jackson’s face at that moment. The way he squared his jaw and rolled his shoulders told him that not all of them were pleasant.

“I am just happy I was not too late,” the Uranian said in a low sigh. “I knew what was happening, and I could have done something earlier.”

“Was it his dad?” Brett guessed, and he immediately bit his tongue for saying it aloud, because Jackson froze where he stood. The Uranian turned to look at him very slowly, there was fear in his eyes, and when he spoke next, he did so in almost a whisper.

“What has he told you?”

That was all the confirmation Brett needed.

“Nothing,” Brett was quick to admit. “He… he has not told me anything. I guessed: he has mentioned his mother and his brother, and his foster family out in the Rim—”

“We’re not talking about him,” Jackson said in an icy tone.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know. But still. That’s not my story to tell, and I may be a bad one, and I may not have always risen to the occasion, but I’m Isaac’s friend.”

There was an uncomfortable pause, during which Brett tried to read Jackson’s face, but he had turned it into a mask of contained rage and shame.

“I better get going,” Brett knew he could not press this issue.

“You can’t tell him,” Jackson warned before he could turn around. “He didn’t want you to know. You cannot mention this.”

Brett did not say anything, but he understood, and he sagged his shoulders as he nodded. His mind was buzzing with thoughts about Isaac, his father, Jackson and the secret backstory that they all seemed to share but that they were not allowed to mention. What could possibly have happened to traumatise Isaac (and Jackson)?

“I’ll come and find you when I hear back from him,” Jackson eventually said, visibly calmer, but gently guiding him out of his cabin. “I’ll walk you to the hub.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boom, now Jackson is back! 
> 
> I tried to make a point of Jackson not telling Brett abouot Isaac's story because in my first fic Jackson told Liam about himand Isaac and Isaac's dad... that that has been bugging me ever since. I want to think it was justified back then. Anyways... ramble ramble *sorry Isaac I had Jackson telling a secret it was not his to tell*
> 
> Oh, and I just found out that tomorrow 27th of Feb is Isaac's birthday, so happy birthday to him <3


	21. A macabre revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There, on the wall on his way to the D gallery, there was a gilded plaque commemorating one Rose Lahey who died there on the tragical accident of the Day of Oberon’s First Orbit, dedicated by her husband – and without any mention of their children.
> 
> OR: After snooping around with Lydia and an argument with Liam, Brett goes out for a walk in the colony to calm down, learning things about Isaac's past. And Jackson introduced him to a friend of his.

“Good morning crew,” Scott announced through the radio. “Sorry I’m late. This is Captain Scott McCall speaking; today is Friday, JD 2638780 and it is 7:34 standard, we’re still docked on Oberon.”

Brett was sitting at the kitchen, next to Malia and Stiles, who stopped their intense conversation about the most recent Martian soap to listen to the captain’s announcement. Brett, however, could not really pay attention. After finding out what had happened back on Beacon H and the scale of the conspiracy Theo was immersed in, he could only think about Isaac and his friends and family who were now being forced to evacuate their colony. Worst of all was that he could not tell anything to anyone else other than Lydia, Scott, and Jackson. The only positive was that, through Jackson, he had been able to contact Isaac and he knew that his boyfriend was okay.

“So, erm… there is a minor issue, apparently, which is going to delay us for a few more days.” Stiles and Malia groaned at this. “Yes, erm… something needs fixing again, I’m afraid. But I’m sure we’ll be ready in no time. Also…”

“What’s broken now?” Stiles asked, ignoring the rest of Scott’s address.

“There’s a leak,” Brett said casually without detailing much on what he and Lydia had agreed the night before. A leak was both something plausible and something that could possibly have been overseen by Isaac. “One of the sensors went off last night and there’s PX5 liquid permeating into the umbilical service.”

“It better not flood the cargo bay,” Malia said, worried only about her responsibility on the ship.

“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” he lied, shaking his head.

“Hey, what’s wrong now?” Theo asked the moment he walked into the kitchen and saw Brett. “I thought the ship had been fixed?”

His tone was more aggressive than Brett had ever heard him use before.

“There’s a minor problem,” Brett said before Stiles could give his skewed view on the situation.

“Yeah, we’re going to be landed here for a while,” Malia shook her head as she finished eating her porridge.

“We’re delayed?” Theo asked.

“Oh, don’t worry, babe,” Liam said, squeezing past him to get into the kitchen and heading straight to the food processor. “This place seems nice enough. I’m sure there are many things to do here.”

“But I thought _we_ were in a hurry? Didn’t Lydia make a big fuss back in the Outer Rim?” Theo deflected, quite cleverly in Brett’s opinion.

“Well, one thing I can tell you,” Stiles chipped in, adding more sugar to his coffee. “She is not best pleased.”

That put Theo slightly at ease, Brett noticed, but then Theo turned to face the mechanic. “I thought you and your boyfriend had sorted everything out.”

“How much do you know about spaceships?” Brett asked, trying to calculate his next move. In any other circumstances he would have been quite offended at the suggestion that he had not done his job right (especially when it came from the likes of Theo), but he knew that this time he just had to take it.

“A fair amount,” Theo smirked, and Brett did not doubt him. A pause followed.

“I’ll fix it soon enough,” Brett said as he tried to focus back on his food. “Don’t worry.”

“Is the station engineer here also going to help you? I hope this one does not prove that much of a distraction…”

“Be nice,” Liam punched Theo’s arm as he brought breakfast for both of them. He then put his hand on Brett’s forearm, reassuringly, which was the main reason why the mechanic did not lash out. “Brett, have you heard from Isaac yet?”

Brett let out a loud sigh. “No.”

“He’ll be fine, don’t worry,” the security officer smiled at him, trying to be supportive. Brett really appreciated it.

“Thanks.”

“Mr Talbott,” Lydia called through the ship’s intercom. “Please come to the bridge?”

The Ceresian excused himself as he stood up and brought his unfinished bowl of porridge with him. He gave everyone a small wave goodbye and, as he walked behind Theo, flicked him in the ear just as he was drinking.

“Don’t choke on that,” Brett said through a grin while Theo coughed the juice out, and Liam slapped his back to help him breathe.

“To be fair, you deserved that…” Brett heard Malia say just before leaving the kitchen.

Just before entering the bridge Brett bumped into Scott and Allison, who were on their way out to Oberon. The pilot smiled at him, and Brett was slightly taken aback, and it took him one split second longer than necessary to smile back. The mechanic had to remind himself that there was no way that she was plotting with Theo. It made no sense. And yet…

Allison noticed Brett’s reticence, and one of her eyebrows rose questioningly, but said nothing.

“Come on, Scott,” she said, keeping her eyes on Brett, who slipped past them to find Lydia.

“Bye, you two,” he said once he was on the bridge.

“Mr Talbot,” Lydia called from behind him. “A word, please?”

“Sure.”

They waited until door slid shut and a bit longer to make sure Scott and Allison were out of ear shot. On the bridge, the ship’s AI hummed lowly, only controlling the basic systems since the _Melissa_ was docked.

“Are you going to visit Isaac’s friend?” she asked with a casual voice, although her face was serious. Brett could guess her intentions, and with Theo onboard all their covert communications had to be either completely avoided, or disguised and kept to a minimum.

“I hope he may have news from him,” Brett admitted. “Any news really.”

“Good,” that was all she needed to know. “I’ve always heard good things about a restaurant in the colony’s concourse,” she added, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Stiles and I will be having lunch there, maybe you could join us?”

Brett pressed his lips into a thin line before answering.

“Maybe I could join you for a drink beforehand?” he suggested. He knew they would not be discussing anything with Stiles present, but he could not see why Lydia would propose to meet otherwise.

“Sounds fantastic,” she nodded, and Brett felt an unexpected wave of relief – he had never expected having to play spies on his own ship. They did not know if Theo was actively listening to them or if he had just had an AI bugging the ship, but they wanted to play it safe. “I’ll see if the captain could join us.”

“May I go now? There are some mechanical issues I need to see to.”

“Of course,” she gave him a complicit smile. “Perhaps you could show me what is wrong this time?”

That he had not foreseen, and his brow furrowed into a knot.

“Ehm… yes, sure?”

“Perfect,” she smiled as she ever so slightly gave him a nod with her eyes. “I’ll come around 10:30, will you meet me outside?”

_Ah. There you go._

“No problem.”

“Thank you, Mr Talbott,” and now Lydia elegantly sat on her chair and gave him a gentle dismissal wave. “I shall see you later.”

Brett walked out of the bridge and went straight to his workshop, for the sake of appearances. He was going to have to dismantle the hydraulic and refrigerator circuits of the umbilical service socket only to assemble it back – something in his gut told him Theo would come and check.

Before he got as far as the lower corridor, however, his path was interrupted by a five-foot-seven Martian.

“What?” he asked with a tired sigh.

“Erm… wanna sit for a chat?”

“What about, Liam?” Brett was unnecessarily harsh. “I need to do some work.”

Brett saw Liam’s eye flicker and his nose stiffen, but he controlled it and tried again.

“I’m sorry Theo was being a jerk.”

“You shouldn’t be apologising for him.”

“You shouldn’t be lashing at me either.”

Brett sagged his shoulders because Liam was right. “Okay, come into my workshop. I could do with a hand.”

They walked in silence through the ship until Brett reached his door and opened it.

“So,” he said as he dropped himself on his chair and turned on his computer. “What do you want to talk about?”

“What’s wrong between you and Theo?” he asked directly.

“I’m sorry, Liam,” Brett apologised, mostly because he did not feel he had the strength to discuss him right now. “I’ve been just a bit stressed these days and your _boyfriend_ is not helping.”

“I told you he’s been keeping an eye on you,” Liam said, standing in a corner. “He cares, really… That’s just his humour.”

“Well, I don’t need any of his humour right now.”

“Have you got a problem with him or what?” Liam now sounded cross, and Brett cursed internally, because he did but it was not the moment.

“I haven’t heard from my boyfriend in four days,” Brett admitted. “Alright? His entire colony has gone radio silent. So right now, _your_ boyfriend making uncalled-for comments is the last thing that I need. And, frankly? If he’s like that now with a friend of yours, do you think he’s the best guy for you?”

“Oh, so that’s it now? All about you?” Liam’s face was turning red. “You get a say on who I date?”

“No, but I’m your friend,” Brett closed his eyes and steadied himself before he said something worse. “And I get to call out when I think you’re making a bad choice.”

“You haven’t asked me how I feel about him. I don’t know – maybe that also matters?”

Brett had to bite his tongue.

“Yes, it does, Liam. Just forget about it, please? I just haven’t got the time for him hurrying me up and bothering me about the ship on top of everything.”

Liam did not reply to that. He just stood up and stormed out still fuming, leaving Brett alone and upset in his workshop.

**~ * ~**

At the agreed hour, Brett walked outside and waited by the airlock for Lydia, who appeared not a minute later, immaculately dressed as always.

“Mr Talbot,” she greeted with a smile.

“Commissioner Martin?”

“So, what exactly have you been up to this morning?”

“I’ve had to dismantle a few systems on the port side outer hull,” he admitted. Behind her, Brett could see crews and passengers walking in and out of ships, most of them converging into the corridor that led to the orbital elevator.

“Good. Could you please show me?” she asked with a sly grin which Brett could not fully decipher.

“Yes, of course. Follow me.”

They walked onto the _Melissa_ and they logged themselves in. Lydia deftly noticed that they were the only members of the crew currently on board and that their single passenger was equally out, and once they were both on the ship’s side of the airlock, Lydia tapped in a few instructions and entered a security code and the ship went into security system reboot.

“What’s that for?” Brett asked when the main door shut firmly behind him and the AI announced that it was doing a scheduled review of the security system.

“We have just about enough time to do this,” she said, walking straight towards the cabins.

“Time to do what?” Brett asked from behind her.

“Have a quick look before Liam walks back.”

Brett frowned. Liam was the one security officer who tended to leave the security codes lying around. Now that he thought about it, he had left them in his accommodation on Beacon H when he was with Theo, and Brett cursed because if only he had known back then… In any case, when the security system rebooted Liam was immediately notified.

“When did we have the next scheduled reboot?” Brett wanted to know.

“If Liam asks, you fidgeted with the wrong cable,” Lydia explained, and the mechanic snorted.

“And where are we going to have a look?”

“Here.” Lydia stopped and used her master code to override the lock on Theo’s cabin and slide the door open.

Theo’s cabin was neat and tidy, almost with military precision. The only items that were out of place were half-a-dozen items of clothing that dangled from shelves and lay on the floor.

“Liam’s?” Lydia questioned, scrunching her nose.

“Strangely enough, yes, I can confirm those are Liam’s pants,” Brett admitted as he pulled a face. The security officer had the unique ability to leave his underwear in the lockers of the exercise room – sometimes he even left the clean ones behind. “I never thought the day would come when that knowledge would be relevant.”

The cabin was one of the three passenger cabins the _Melissa_ had, and they were all equipped with the same standard furniture: desk, shelf, bed, hygiene pod and desk connected to the ships AI.

“It looks normal,” Brett said after casting a glance around. “Nothing is out of place.”

“Almost perfect, in fact,” Lydia pointed out as she bit her lip. “Too suspicious.”

“We don’t have time to pull down the panels and search the bed,” Brett said when the AI gently beeped its reminder that they were in a security system reboot.

“No…” Lydia said, carefully inspecting the room without moving from where she stood. “No, we don’t.”

Brett did not have time to ask. Lydia stepped to a corner of the room and turned to one side, facing the other way. She then pointed to one of the opposite corners.

“There,” she said. “Have a look.”

Brett walked in to have a proper view of what Lydia was pointing at and then he noticed a ventilation grid, unsure about how she had reached her conclusion. He pulled his omnitool from its holster in his belt and with a few quick movements pulled the grid down.

“You’re tall,” she grinned. “What’s in there?”

Brett very slowly reached into the vent, which Lydia would have never reached, and gently pulled a rectangular device, a bit smaller than his toolbox, which was panelled in new, high-density, Galatean polymer on five of its sides. The corners were perfectly smooth, and the back panel had a few connections which proved that this device could be connected to a ship or an AI. The front one, however, was very clearly that of a radio communicator, clearly inspired by, but not quite similar to, classic Argent types.

“It’s an Argent radio,” Brett guessed. “But it’s _not._ ”

“Put it back?” she instructed.

“What?” he turned around in surprise.

“Put it back. This is all we needed to know,” she explained. “We know he has it, we know where he keeps it—”

“Where he keeps it _now_.”

“He’s not going to run away with it any time soon. At least now we know what to keep an eye open for.”

The mechanic nodded silently and placed the radio back where he found it, securing the grid back on the ventilation shaft. Once he did that, Lydia waved at him to leave the room, which she locked again.

“How did you know it was there?” he wanted to know, but Lydia pushed him, insisting they left that corridor immediately.

“That room did not smell fresh. Despite Liam’s clothes, our ventilation system is better than that. Now _move_.”

“Where are we going?”

“To wherever you have been unplugging and dismantling things,” she directed him, and Brett took a quick right. At that moment the AI announced that the security system had been successfully rebooted. It was only a matter of minutes before Liam turned up asking questions.

“And are we telling Scott?” he asked next in a hushed tone.

“We’re still meeting for drinks,” she confirmed. “And you need to go and see Jackson.”

**~ * ~**

Liam had a few angry words with them about touching what they should not and about how they should have known better, but after he shouted his piece, he made sure that nothing really had happened, and let them be. Brett was surprised to see how Lydia stood there and calmly accepted Liam’s reprimand, because he had expected both of them to clash. But nothing happened, Liam did not bite anyone’s head off, and life on the _Melissa_ was allowed to continue as normal.

After the charade, Lydia excused herself and left the ship, which left Brett with little to do.

The mechanic walked back to his workshop, but he found it impossible to focus on anything work related. He sent a few messages to Isaac, hoping that he could receive them, even if he knew he would not get a reply. Eventually he decided to give up all pretence and walked into the colony, hoping a stroll would help him calm down before he had his lunch appointment with Stiles and Lydia.

Isaac had told him a number of things about the Oberon colony, but he had failed to mention that it was a triple station – that was something Brett saw when they first approached Oberon. Up from the moon’s equator below, and anchored deep into its lithosphere, came the orbital elevator. At the top end of this elevator was a core unit, much like that from Beacon H. This core was a low-G area since it was not rotating, and it was the main hub for re-distribution of raw materials extracted down in the mines. Around and connected to this core there were _three_ stations, rotating fast enough to generate 1G at the far end. The Oberon colony was only one of these; the other two were the main industrial sectors where tholins and ice were processed. These also acted as counter-weights to keep the colony from wabbling away into space.

It all might have made sense to Isaac because he had been born there, but Brett had a difficult time trying to comprehend where he was. Since Uranus’ rotation axis was parallel to the ecliptic, its moons and rings orbited perpendicularly to it, but then the Oberon station -because of its position around the space elevator- was orbiting perpendicularly to the moon’s already perpendicular orbit. Now the sun came from one side of the colony, as it must have done during the solstice, when Isaac saw the alignment. But then, would the sun come from the opposite side during the other solstice? Would the planet block the sun completely during the equinox? All those rotations and orbits made him dizzy.

The colony itself was formed by five different domes, a central one (the hall of the elevator that connected the colony with the core and with the moon) and four other ones around it, cardinally located, in a cross-shape. Three of these peripheral domes were devoted solely to housing, while the fourth one was the colony hub, where most of the daily life took place. The five domes were all connected by wide vaulted corridors, and the gaps in between the domes and the corridors were filled with auxiliary sectors: a medic bay, a power unit, a sports arena, a biodome, shops, storage… The domes were made of some translucid material, Brett did not know what (although Isaac would certainly know a lot about it), fitted into a large, ribbed frame of metal and nanotubes that parcelled the sky into ever-decreasing segments that culminated in the round oculus.

Brett had noticed that, depending on the position of the station, they got direct sunlight or the green-blue light reflected from the planet, and Uranus was an unavoidable sight, looming up above, large, green, frozen. At one point Brett thought he had managed to see the rings of Uranus, glowing with an unexpected pink shine – just like Isaac had described them. Back on Ceres they never had such incredible or inspiring views, and he could not blame his boyfriend for wanting to become a space explorer.

The docks (or, at least, the commercial docks, and not the industrial ones) were located all around the colony, opening into the links between the domes (never on the domes themselves). There were direct links between the docking areas and the elevator hall, and Brett took that route. Perhaps it was the time of day, but Brett felt that the colony was less busy. Or, at least, that was the impression he got from the docks; the moment he reached the elevator hall he saw the vibrant buzz of the colony as people came and went.

The first thing he did was to walk to the foot of the statue that commanded the elevator hall. It was the statue of a man with the Uranus system in his hand and a handful of medals on his chest. His face was turned into a slight mocking grin, and Brett could not believe they had given the statue such crazy hair. A large plaque on the pedestal proclaimed that this was Commander Bobby Finstock, followed by a long list of achievements which he glossed over, and it concluded with a quote that made him chuckle, because he had heard it before.

“ _The bigger they are, the bigger they are_.”

Brett made a mental note to ask Isaac about the true meaning of that, because he was sure that it made no sense – Icer wisdom or not.

From there, Brett found it easy to make his way to the colony hub, which was the main dome of the colony. As he walked into the hub through a large, illuminated arch, Brett could see that there were terraces and platforms built all around the walls of the dome. These were full of shops big and small, and an impressive array of restaurants and bars. But most striking was de design of the entire thing. The terraces did not form rings around the dome, they formed U-shapes, leaving a wide opening in the centre that aligned with the entrance he had just walked through and that opened towards the Sun.

Brett could see that there was something else in that central space at ground level, and even with his height, the masses of people walking up and down did not let him see it properly. As he made his way towards this central area, he felt the hairs on the back of his head stand on end. There was something important – there was something _relevant_ about this hub. Brett scratched his head as he continued walking forward, avoiding passers-by and ignoring the loud commercials coming out of the loudspeakers. Then he _saw_ it: in the central part of the hub there was a series of monoliths standing proud. At first he had assumed they were pillars supporting the dome or a terrace, but these were free-standing, polished, black stones set in pairs, and perfectly aligned.

It all then clicked.

_This is the Orbital Timepiece!_

The Ceresian walked forward in awe. That was the place where Isaac had seen the alignment. That was the place where the accident had happened. Brett did not want to imagine what his boyfriend would have gone through: the excitement of the astronomical event of his young lifetime suddenly turned into one of his worse memories. Back on the _Melissa,_ Isaac had been so vulnerable when he had explained this, and yet that had somehow brought them closer.

Standing there, touching those stones, Brett felt sad. Sad and alone. He really missed Isaac, and he wished he could be with his boyfriend to hold him and kiss him until Isaac half-moaned and told him to stop.

Brett sat on one of the polished benches which were flanked by garden boxes with small, fragrant white and red flowers. He bit his lip and he sunk his head as he passed his fingers through his hair. He knew he was going to find things that reminded him of Isaac when he walked around, but he had never expected to feel so overwhelmed at the sight of the Timepiece.

He sat there for a few more minutes, thinking about Isaac and his brother; thinking about himself and Lori; about the Hewitts and about Satomi. He knew life was unfair, but he also believed that things eventually balanced out.

With a big sigh, Brett stood up and tried to get his bearings because he had to meet Scott and Lydia for drinks before lunch with Stiles. He had to connect his buzzer to the colony’s AI in the end, but the computer gave him a route and Brett was on his way.

It was, however, on his way to the restaurant, where he saw the thing that got him the deepest, to the point that he had to stop and make sure he had not imagined what he had seen. There, on the wall on his way to the D gallery, there was a gilded plaque commemorating one Rose Lahey who died there on the tragical accident of the Day of Oberon’s First Orbit, dedicated by her husband – and without any mention of their children.

**~ * ~**

When Brett got to the restaurant, he saw Lydia and Scott sat at a table, but Stiles was there too. They were busy having a lively conversation, and he guessed that they would have to postpone their covert business. When they saw him they all waved, but soon they noticed something was off.

“Hey, buddy, what’s wrong?” Stiles asked with real concern.

“Yeah, Brett, you look really upset,” Scott agreed, his smile now gone.

“It’s this place,” Brett said curtly as he sat and unclenched his fists. He had very little information to stand on, but everything he learnt about Isaac’s father was very bad – and that made his blood boil.

“Is this because of Is—” Stiles was about to say, but Lydia elbowed him with military precision, interrupting him.

“Let’s have a drink,” she said with tact. “And a nice lunch. We might as well make the best out of our stay here, right?”

“We’ll get news from him soon,” Scott said, patting Brett’s arm. “Don’t worry.”

Brett sighed heavily and nodded. Scott and Lydia took the reins of the conversation and, to their credit, they did a good job. By the end of their meal, Brett’s simmering anger had mostly faded, and he was feeling more like himself. Stiles surprised them by paying for lunch, although he half-joked that he did it so they would feel pressured into playing _Explorers of Alpha Centauri_ with him later that evening.

Scott, Lydia and Brett exchanged some significant glances and mouthed a few words, but it was clear that if Brett was going to meet Jackson later, they could wait until then to discuss anything they needed to. Once they reached their silent agreement, Scott excused himself and went to look for Allison and Malia, Lydia had to go to the administrative offices to look for the Martian delegation, which left Stiles and Brett.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Stiles asked. “I will try the planetary relay this afternoon, and we should have news in no time,” he added with a smile.

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry,” Brett nodded and even managed to smile. Stiles did not seem very convinced, but let him go. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“It’ll all be fine. And you’re playing.” It was more a statement than a question.

“Yeah, don’t worry. I will…”

They said their goodbyes and they walked in opposite directions. Brett knew that Jackson would come and find him, but the details about the how and the when were not very clear, so he headed towards the archive building where they had their first meeting and hoped that Jackson would be there. He was not very confident about this, but by the time he reached the entrance the councilman was already there waiting.

“How did you do that?” Brett wanted to know.

“The station’s security AI told me you were coming,” Jackson replied. “Come this way,” he nodded towards a different street.

“Where are we going?” Brett asked as he followed, but Jackson did not answer.

They walked in silence for five minutes until they reached one of the residential domes, but they were not going to Jackson’s cabin. Brett was dying to ask about Isaac and the message he had sent him, but he did not get a chance. Another five minutes later they had climbed up to one of the apartment blocks that crammed the dome, and they stopped outside a door with a big 343 painted in Uranus green.

Jackson knocked and, after a few seconds, the door opened. The man who opened the door was definitely very attractive, with tan skin and brown eyes. He had a straight nose and a rounded chin.

“Come in,” he said with a smile, even if he looked furtively around.

Jackson and Brett walked in, and the door slid behind them. They were in a nice apartment, smaller than Jackson’s, and with windows that looked into the rest of the dome, rather than outside, but it was tidy and cosy.

“Brett, this is Danny,” Jackson introduced them.

Brett shook his hand but said nothing. He just turned to Jackson, glaring at him.

“He’s been helping,” Jackson admitted, nervously pulling at the collar of his jacket.

“He’s told me,” Danny said. “About Isaac, I mean.”

“What were you thinking?” Brett hissed, ignoring their host. “The one thing we were told was to keep quiet about this! If there are infiltrators around, how do we know he is not working for them? How can you _trust_ him!”

“Brett, wait until he tells you what he has found out.”

“No,” Brett insisted. “I won’t. Isaac is _your_ friend! He asked you to do just one thing and you could not even do it!”

“I’ve known Danny for almost as long as I’ve known Isaac,” Jackson blurted, his blue eyes turned icy cold. “Isaac trusts me, and I trust Danny. If that’s not good enough for you then tough luck!”

“Guys,” Danny intervened when Jackson stepped forward and invaded Brett’s space. “Yes, I can see why you think Jackson sharing the secret with me was a gamble, but why don’t you have a look first at what I have to show, and then you can judge?”

Brett was fuming. Scott and Lydia were hiding this from their partners and their friends, and Jackson had just gone and told every single secret detail to his friend?

“I knew Isaac too,” Danny admitted, and that caught Brett’s attention. “We weren’t really friends, but I knew him. This colony is not that big… We played tag-crosse together.”

“And that’s meant to make me trust you?”

“Please, just have a look at this,” Danny gave him a memory cube. “There’s the holoprojector.”

“What is this?” Brett asked more cautiously now, looking at Danny and Jackson with renewed interest.

“I am not the best one to go spying around,” Jackson explained as he leant forward against the back of a couch. “But Danny is an expert in surveillance. He works in comms here in the colony.”

“If you came on the Mike-Alpha-Tango 5773, then I know your radio operator,” Danny smiled. “He talks a lot, and he’s from Venus.”

“Stiles,” Brett admitted curtly.

“Danny is better at this than me. I could not keep an eye on Theo, I did not know where to start,” Jackson justified his actions.

“So you’ve been following Theo?” Brett now pointed at Danny.

“I tried, but he has some sort of signal blocker, and he is almost impossible to track through normal AIs,” Danny admitted with worry. There was a pause as Brett drank this in and looked at Jackson – again they were faced with unexplainably advanced technology, and he had not even told them about the radio he had found with Lydia that morning. “Anyways,” Danny continued. “I was able to track them, but I had to personally tail him with a low-power holocam, because these things work differently than the optically-enhanced cameras of the AIs.”

“So you were walking around following him with a camera from a tourist giftshop?” Brett arched an eyebrow.

“To a degree,” Danny smirked smugly. “I had a drone clipped to the ceiling follow him.”

“And where did he go?” Brett asked, running out of patience.

“It’s better if you see,” Jackson sighed as he hung his head low.

Brett looked at Danny, and he also had a grim look on his face. The Ceresian then walked towards the holoprojector, placed the memory cube in the reader, and waited.

A couple of seconds later, a holofilm was projected in the living room. Through the drone’s elevated perspective they followed Theo around the colony, at times with Liam, at times on his own. Danny tapped a few commands and the film sped up, and Brett waited. Then the hologram played at normal speed and Brett saw Theo making a turn into a dark alley.

“That’s one of the back passages of the service sections,” Jackson explained. “They’re usually closed.”

“How did he open it?” Bret asked.

“It had been left open.”

The drone lost sight of Theo for a couple of seconds but then found him again, and this time he was standing next to another man, older, taller, balding, and with glasses.

“ _Are you agent PF54?_ ” Theo asked in the recording.

“ _Yes. Are you GGB3?_ ” the man asked. Brett noticed that he had a weapon holstered on his back, although Theo did not seem to have seen it.

There was a pause as Theo pulled a small gizmo from his pocket and extended it to the other man, who quickly pressed a finger on it until it beeped.

“ _Welcome to Oberon, Commander Raeken_ ,” the man said. “ _I am Patrick Lahey_.”

“ _Did you say Lahey?_ ”

“ _Why?_ ”

“ _I might have met one of your sons out in the Kuiper Belt_.”

Then the man huffed and spat.

“ _I have_ no _sons_.”

At that point Brett was ready to jump up. He tried to ignore the pettiness and the resentment that man had against his children, but Isaac’s father was an infiltrated spy collaborating with Theo. His head began to spin.

“ _Whatever_ ,” Theo said dismissively, paying no attention to the Laheys’ quarrel. “ _My departure is delayed, but the plan still remains the same. You will get the information about the other cells when I leave, following Directive Omega. You must secure the station after that and relay the orders accordingly._ ”

“ _Yes, sir_.”

“ _The Outer Rim is ready and our units are in position. The rest of the fleet will arrive as planned_.”

“ _Yes, sir_.”

“ _You’ve done a good job here_ ,” Theo concluded with a smirk, and Brett immediately understood why Isaac had punched him in the face.

**~ * ~**

“Fleet?” was Brett’s first reaction. “What fleet? And that’s Isaac’s father?”

Brett had to sit down on the couch. His head was spinning at the scale of the revelations. Isaac had somehow told them that there was an imminent danger, but it had seemed to them that it was some sort of industrial take over. Brett had guessed that Argent Industries was trying to create a corporate state in the Outer Rim and that Theo was trying to coordinate a largescale cover up until it was too late. But Theo was talking about units and about a fleet, which together with the advanced technology they were using clearly invalidated that idea.

“That’s Isaac’s father,” Jackson said, without masking the vitriol in his voice. “And he’s obviously an infiltrator.”

“Of what fleet?” Brett insisted.

“There have always been rumours of a hidden fleet,” Danny explained. “There have always been background radio noises and lost emissions that nobody could explain.”

“So now we’re dealing with children’s stories?” Brett scoffed.

“You would think so, but in the underwave there have always been mentions of coded messages and number stations,” Danny explained.

Brett did not know much about comms, but thanks to Satomi he knew that the underwave was meant to be a set of frequencies alternative to official and usual channels. He had never taken it seriously, though.

“Number stations?” the Ceresian asked – that was the one thing he did not know.

“It’s a very old way of transmitting radio information,” Danny told him. From Jackson’s look, Brett guessed he had already been filled in. “They’ll play a circular tune and then a synth will give a list of numbers. Each combination means something in a one-use code book. It’s positively prehistoric,” he concluded.

“Okay, okay,” Brett was ready to believe that. “But how does that link to this fleet and this unit?”

Danny looked at Jackson, who nodded sullenly.

“There was a famous number station that had been emitting for years. The Yuggoth MC they called it,” Danny said. “Nobody could triangulate it, and it seems that it emitted from many places and—anyways, the point is that ten days ago the Yuggoth MC stopped emitting for good.”

There was a tense silence after that.

“And how is that significant?”

“Well, from what Isaac told me, ten days ago is when—”

“—when the last of the new ships arrived to Beacon H,” Brett finished the sentence. “How does that help us? And what did this MC broadcast?”

Danny tapped a few things on his computer and his cabin’s AI played an audio recording. First came a tune, grainy and so overly-modulated as to sound damaged. Two stanzas of the song played before a high-pitch beep marked the end of the transmission, then a synth said a sequence of six different numbers. Then it beeped again, and the music played again.

“Play that again?” Brett said, and Danny did so. They listened to the eerie message once again. “I know that tune.”

“What do you mean you know that tune?”

“I’ve heard it before,” Brett sighed heavily as everything fitted into place. “This is the tune that Josh hummed on Beacon H, the one Isaac hated.”

“Well, that’s an old tune from a few centuries ago,” Danny added. “It’s an old Martian version of _The Green Hills of Earth_.”

“Don’t you sing that song here all the time?” Brett asked.

“I don’t,” Danny said.

“Isaac does,” the mechanic added flatly. “He sings your Uranian version. _We’ve tried each spinning space mote, and reckoned its true worth: Take us back again to the homes of men, on the cool, green hills of Earth_?”

“Of course, he still does…” Jackson half-chuckled after Brett hummed those verses.

“But why does he hate it?” Danny was not sure he was following.

“Because I’m sure he’s heard it before,” Jackson said, more sombrely. “From his father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha! Danny is now in this fic!!
> 
> Yes, because I refuse to use magical, artificial gravity, all my ships and stations have to spin to have gravity. Since Oberon is tidally locked with Uranus, if doesn't reall spin, so I had to come up with a complex way to have an anchored colony with gravity. Hopefully the drawings help understand? (Anyways. all the drawings (and other illustrations I found inspiring) I've collected in my tumblr under the RhysLahey's Green Hills of Earth tag!)
> 
> Oh, and number stations are an actual real thing. Creepy AF. Here's the [Lincolnshire Poacher](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Poacher.ogg)

**Author's Note:**

> Glossary  
> • Arty – (from artifact) Terran, native of the museum-preserve First Planet.  
> • Asteroid – small rocky object orbiting the sun. Figuratively: idiot, moron.  
> • Belter – (colloq.) native of the Asteroid belt  
> • Buzzer – AI wrist communicator.  
> • Cereal – (insult, vulg.) Ceresian.  
> • Clicker/omnitool – multipurpose device, tool.  
> • Cracker – mining station.  
> • Earth – Terra, the Home World, the First Planet. Figuratively: the mythic origin and creator; God.  
> • Frozeball – (insult, vulg.) in general, native of the frozen edge beyond Saturn.  
> • Gaser – (colloq.) native of the Gaseous Giants, Jupiter and Saturn.  
> • Glider – long-distance ship.  
> • Hopper – ferry; regular ship connecting two planets.  
> • Icer – (colloq.) native of the Ice Giants, Uranus and Neptune.  
> • Innerd – (colloq. Uranian) non-Icer, native of any planet closer than Uranus to the Sun.  
> • Koop – (colloq.) native of the Kuiper Belt.  
> • Oort – cloud of gas at the edge of the Solar System. Figuratively: the worst place imaginable; Hell.  
> • Oortwards – away from the Sun. Figuratively: badly.  
> • Ringtard – (insult, vulg.) Saturnian.  
> • Rocker – (colloq.) native of the Inner (Rocky) planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.  
> • Space – cosmos; expanse and realm of the celestial bodies. Figuratively, exclamation.  
> • Tholins – (astrochem.) basic organic compounds, mostly gaseous in the Ice Giants, but frozen solid in the Kuiper Belt.  
> • Trolley – cargo ship.  
> • Uranal – (insult, vulg.) Uranian.


End file.
